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Behrends,  a 

1900. 
The  world  for  Christ 


Behrends;  a.  j.  p.  1839. 
1900.  J-ojy- 


THE  WORLD  FOR  CHRIST 


~i' 


AH  22 


A.  J.  F.  BEHRENDS,  D.D.  -    — t*-.- 


A    Series   of    Addresses   on   Missions,   Delivered    at 

Syracuse  University  on  the  Graves 

Foundation,  1896 


NEWYORK:   EATON  &  MAINS 

CINCINNATI:  CURTS  &  JENNINGS 

1896 


Copyright  by 

EATON  &  MAINS, 

1896. 


Eaton  &  Mains  Press, 
150  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


INTRODUCTION- 


THIS  book,  The  World  for  Christ,  is  a 
valuable  addition  to  the  large  litera- 
ture inspired  by  the  modern  missionary 
movement.  Delivered  as  a  course  of  lec- 
tures by  an  eminent  Congregational  minis- 
ter, upon  a  foundation  established  in  a 
Methodist  university  by  an  honored  mem- 
ber of  the  Reformed  Church,  it  is  one  of 
many  indications  that  the  larger  service  of 
the  divine  kingdom  is  the  sure  way  to  the 
unity  of  Christians. 

That  universities  and  colleges  should  in- 
corporate with  their  courses  of  instruction 
the  study  of  Christianity,  its  nature  and 
history,  its  methods  and  outlook,  is  emi- 
nently natural,  and  even  necessary.  They 
are  themselves,  for  the  most  part,  the  crea- 
tion of  the  Church,  and  continue  under  its 
fostering  care.  Where  this  direct  depend- 
ence does  not  exist,  an  indirect  relation  is 


4  Introduction. 

easily  traced.  But,  beyond  and  above  this, 
they  are  devoted  to  the  ascertainment  and 
diffusion  of  all  truth.  They  cannot  therefore 
ignore  or  treat  lightly  the  most  potent  fac- 
tor in  modern  history  and  philosophy;  a 
force  to  which  our  existing  civilization  is  in 
every  department — in  government,  morals, 
art,  literature,  and  social  progress — im- 
measurably indebted,  and  which,  whatever 
some  critics  may  think,  gives  no  signs  of 
being  eliminated  from  the  course  of  the 
race  life.  Indeed,  the  modern  missionary 
movement  presents  the  clearest  evidence 
that  Christianity  is  a  divine,  indestructible, 
and  world-transforming  energy  entered  into 
the  heart  of  humanity,  and  that  no  philos- 
ophy of  history  can  be  valid  which  does  not 
reckon  with  it  as  a  prime  factor  in  the  life 
of  man. 

A  natural  gratitude  and  the  love  of  truth 
in  the  university  and  college  therefore  as- 
sure us  that  hereafter,  as  heretofore,  they 
will  reverently  study  Christianity  and  its 
past  and  prospective  place  in  human  history, 
and  also  be  its   glad   and  efficient  allies. 


Introduction.  5 

The  future  will  not  be  unlike  the  past.  From 
Wittenberg  came  Luther,  Melancthon,  and 
the  Protestant  Reformation;  Oxford  gave 
Wesley,  Whitefield,  and  the  Revival  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century ;  Harvard,  founded  by 
the  Puritans,  acknowledged  its  debt  by  the 
legend  on  its  seal,  CJiristo  et  Ecclesice.  At 
Williams  began  the  participation  of  the 
American  Church  in  the  new,  and  still  en- 
larging, struggle  for  a  universal  Christen- 
dom. The  recent  Student  Volunteer  Move- 
ment is  a  further  instance  of  the  deepening 
conviction  that  the  highest  office  of  knowl- 
edge and  culture  is  to  serve  the  Lord  Christ 
and  his  kingdom.  May  our  seats  of  higher 
learning  more  and  more  answer  to  this  di- 
vine vocation ! 

A  movement  so  important  and  so  grand 
as  the  present  missionary  enterprise  needs 
for  support  and  guidance  an  extraordinary 
spirit  and  wisdom.  Evidently  Christians 
have  not  understood  the  vast  proportions  or 
the  true  methods  of  the  work  to  which  they 
are  committed  by  the  aims  and  the  com- 
mand of  their  divine  Lord.     A  world  is  to 


6  Introduction. 

be  evangelized  and  to  be  brought  to  the 
obedience  of  Christ.  How  feeble  the  spirit 
and  courage  of  the  Church !  How  uncer- 
tain and  imperfect  the  agencies  employed ! 
This  volume,  written  by  a  vigorous  and 
independent  thinker,  the  pastor  of  a  large 
and  active  church  in  the  city  of  Brooklyn, 
a  member  for  many  years  of  the  oldest  Mis- 
sionary Board  in  the  United  States,  will  be 
deemed  a  clear  yet  profound,  a  calm  yet 
vigorous,  presentation  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  missions  and  of  the  right 
method  of  conducting  them.  It  cannot  fail 
to  inspire  in  all  who  read  it  more  profound 
convictions  concerning  the  obligation  and 
possibilities  of  this  most  unique  and  hopeful 
enterprise,  and  to  guide  wisely  those  who 
are  concerned  with  its  support  and  man- 
agement. Edward  G.  Andrews. 

New  York,  Oct.  20,  1896. 


CONTENTS 


I. 

The  Authority  to  be  Recognized 9 


II. 
The  Field  to  be  Won 31 


III. 
The  Result  to  be  Achieved 59 

IV. 
The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome 85 

V. 
The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed in 

VI. 
The  Agencies  to  be  Employed 141 


Zbc  Hutborlti?  to  be  IRecogniseb 


THE  WORLD  FOR  CHRIST. 


I. 

The  Authority  to  he  Recogfnized* 

Members  of  the  Faculty,  and  Students  of  the  Syracuse 
University,  and  Friends  of  Christian  Missions  : 

WHEN  I  accepted  the  invitation  which 
has  brought  me  here,  I  did  so  with 
a  singular  blending  of  eagerness  and  re- 
luctance. My  eagerness  was  due  not  only 
to  my  profound  interest  in  the  theme  on 
which  I  was  asked  to  speak,  but  also  to  my 
early  association  with  the  denomination 
which  this  seat  of  learning  is  supposed  to 
represent.  I  never  was  a  Methodist.  I 
was  born  and  trained  in  the  Dutch  Re- 
formed communion,  and  was  early  inocu- 
lated with  the  Calvinistic  theology.  But 
when  eighteen  years  of  age,  while  teaching 
in  one  of  the  rude  schoolhouses  of  Southern 
Ohio,  I  came  under  the  influence  of  a  Meth- 
odist circuit  rider,  who  preached  for  a  fort- 


12  The  World  for  Christ. 

night  where  I  taught  by  day.  As  I  listened 
to  his  pointed  and  fervent  appeals  the  re- 
ligious impressions  and  convictions  of  many 
years  came  to  a  head,  and  one  afternoon, 
as  I  tramped  along  the  rude  highway,  I 
gave  my  heart  to  Christ,  because  he  had 
given  his  life  for  me.  My  theology  had 
little  to  do  with  my  conversion.  In  fact,  I 
consciously  ignored  it.  And  it  is  more 
than  probable  that  this  early  association  has 
had  much  to  do  with  the  gradual,  but 
steady,  slackening  of  dogmatic  bonds,  until 
I  have  abandoned  the  profession  of  march- 
ing under  the  Calvinist  banner.  And  yet  I 
have  not  been  able  to  change  one  uniform 
for  another.  Upon  the  points  in  dispute  I 
like  Augustine  better  than  I  do  either  Cal- 
vin or  Arminius;  and  I  like  Paul  better 
than  them  all,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
he  is  silent  where  they  are  voluminous.  So 
you  will  understand  why  I  always  feel  at 
home  in  a  Methodist  crowd;  and  I  enjoy 
their  Amens,  provided  they  are  put  in  the 
right  place.  The  years  seem  to  roll  back, 
and  I  am  once  more  in  the  primeval  forest, 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        13 

the  woods  which  were  **  God's  first  tem- 
ples." I  see  the  old  sawmill  and  the  limpid 
brook,  over  which  a  log  served  as  a  bridge, 
unless  it  was  frozen  in  winter.  I  see  the 
rude  benches  and  ruder  desk,  with  the 
stove  in  the  center  of  the  room.  I  see  the 
primitive  lamps,  under  whose  dim  religious 
light  the  preacher  addressed  his  audience, 
and  the  mourner's  bench,  at  which  many  of 
them  kneeled.  And  though  the  peace  of 
God  came  to  me  during  the  silence  of  an 
evening  walk,  I  am  afraid  that  I  shouted 
more  than  once  when  that  night  I,  the 
schoolmaster,  told  my  story  of  deliverance. 
I  have  forgotten  the  name  and  the  face  of 
the  preacher,  but  the  place  has  been  indeli- 
bly photographed  upon  my  mind  and  heart. 
It  all  happened  thirty-eight  years  ago,  and 
I  have  never  visited  the  spot.  I  do  not  care 
to  do  it  now,  for  I  am  sure  the  familiar 
landmarks  are  gone,  and  I  should  feel  like 
one 

"  Who  treads  alone 
Some  banquet  hall  deserted, 
Whose  lights  are  fled, 
Whose  garlands  dead  !  " 


14  The  World  for  Christ. 

But  the  hearty  invitation  of  your  chancel- 
lor opened  for  me  that  mystic  chamber 
of  the  past  within  which  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  shone  upon  me,  and  that  made  the 
call  irresistible  and  effectual. 

And  yet  my  eagerness  was  dashed  by 
great  reluctance.  The  call  was  for  a  sud- 
den service.  Barely  two  months  were  al- 
lowed me  for  preparation,  and  what  that 
means  for  a  busy  city  pastor  at  that  time  of 
the  year  your  chancellor  knows  as  well  as 
myself.  I  could  not  take  up  any  specific 
field.  Nor  could  I  enter  upon  an  historical 
treatment  of  the  theme  assigned  me  under 
the  provisions  of  this  lectureship,  either 
general  or  special,  which  I  should  have 
been  glad  to  do  if  a  year's  time  had  been 
at  my  command ;  for  I  am  sure  that  a  care- 
ful study  of  ancient,  mediaeval,  and  modern 
missions,  with  their  agreements  and  their 
differences,  would  have  been  instructive 
and  stimulating.  But  necessity  knows  no 
law ;  at  least  it  admits  of  no  choice.  I  can- 
not do  as  I  would.  I  must  do  as  I  can.  So, 
for  once,  I  am  a  Calvinist  in  the  garb  of  a 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        15 

Remonstrant.  The  best  I  can  do  is  to  treat 
my  theme  in  the  most  general  way,  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  pastor  who  would  create 
and  foster  an  intelligent  and  generous  sym- 
pathy among  his  people  in  the  cause  of 
Christian  missions. 

To  adopt  the  military  figure,  it  is  a  cam- 
paign of  conquest  to  which  we  are  sum- 
moned. The  Church  of  Christ  is  a  Salva- 
tion Army.  We  organize  no  armies,  we 
equip  no  navies,  we  shoulder  no  rifles,  we 
carry  no  swords ;  but  all  that  is  essential  to 
a  great  military  campaign  must  enter  into 
our  procedure.  We  must  clearly  under- 
stand by  whom  we  are  sent,  where  we  are 
to  go,  what  we  are  to  do,  why  we  are  to  do 
it,  and  how  we  are  to  do  it.  So  I  shall  ask 
you  to  consider  with  me,  in  this  course  of 
six  lectures,  the  Authority  to  be  recognized, 
the  Field  to  be  won,  the  Result  to  be 
achieved,  the  Resistance  to  be  overcome,  the 
Leaders  to  be  appointed,  and  the  Agencies  to 
be  employed.  The  division  is  a  simple  one, 
and  I  have  given  it  here  that  it  may  serve 
you  as  a  mnemonic  for  future  use,  to  be  elab- 


16  The  World  for  Christ. 

orated  by  your  own  independent  thought, 
though  you  may  not  recall  anything  that  I 
may  say.  I  shall  be  more  than  repaid  if 
you  remember  the  scheme  of  the  discussion. 

We  are  to  consider,  first,  the  Authority 
to  be  recognized  in  the  prosecution  of  Chris- 
tian missions.  We  are  under  a  fourfold 
pressure.  There  are  four  strands  in  the 
cord  by  which  we  are  bound  to  the  dis- 
charge of  our  high  duty  of  preaching  the 
Gospel  to  all  nations. 

We  must  secure  the  acceptance  of  Chris- 
tianity everywhere  if  we  are  to  preserve 
Christianity  anywhere.  The  final  test  of 
truth  in  any  department,  whether  in  science 
or  philosophy  or  political  economy  or  reli- 
gion, is  the  universality  of  its  application, 
its  congruity  with  fact.  A  doctrine  which 
is  partially  true  must  recede.  The  history 
of  human  thought  shows  it  to  have  been  a 
perpetual  oscillation  between  affirmation 
and  negation,  steadily  proceeding  toward  a 
higher  affirmation.  It  is  the  Hegelian  proc- 
ess of  thesis,  antithesis,  and  synthesis. 
The  final  synthesis  is  the  universal  and  au- 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        17 

thoritative  formula.  You  may  recall  Hux- 
ley's statement  that  theological  dogmas  lit- 
ter the  past  as  so  many  strangled  and  dead 
snakes  around  the  cradle  of  Hercules.  Her- 
cules, of  course,  is  vScience,  and  the  compar- 
ison is  not  complimentary  to  the  theolo- 
gians. But  there  are  as  many  strangled 
scientific  theories  as  there  are  defunct  the- 
ologies. And  the  Hercules  who  strangles 
them  is  simply  the  Truth  which  is  embodied 
in  the  eternal  facts  of  being.  That  which 
is  congruous  with  these  facts  is  the  absolute 
and  universal  truth ;  and  only  that  which  is 
so  congruous  can  survive  in  the  face  of 
these  facts.  Working  theories  are  good,  as 
tentative  explanations,  as  convenient  log- 
ical categories  for  the  student ;  but  the  work- 
ing theory  is  abandoned  so  soon  as  it  is  evi- 
dent that  it  cannot  stand  the  test  of  univer- 
sal verification.  No  doctrine  can  survive 
unless  it  can  conquer.  Its  universal  accept- 
ance is  the  inexorable  condition  of  its  self- 
preservation. 

That  is   true   of   the    Bible  and   of    the 
Christian    religion.      I    need    not    detain 


18  The  World  for  Christ. 

you  to  prove  that  botli  claim  absolute 
and  universal  authority.  But  even  if  they 
made  no  such  claim,  their  preservation  is 
impossible  unless  they  can  secure  universal 
recognition  and  acceptance.  The  Bible 
must  supplant  all  other  religious  books,  or 
itself  be  surrendered.  If  other  sacred  books 
are  to  be  treated  with  equal  reverence,  it 
must  itself  disappear  in  the  recovery  of  that 
which  constitutes  the  common  substratum 
of  them  all.  Christianity  must  supplant  all 
other  religions,  or  itself  ultimately  vanish 
from  every  land.  If  it  be  only  one  of 
many  religions,  we  must  be  prepared  to 
surrender  it  in  the  recovery  of  that  religion 
which  is  the  root  and  trunk  of  all.  The 
self-preservation  of  Christianity  is  condi- 
tioned upon  its  universal  sovereignty.  For 
there  can  be  but  one  religion,  as  there  can 
be  but  one  science  of  astronomy  or  of  phys- 
iology. I  am  speaking  to  those  who  ac- 
cept Christianity  as  the  true  religion,  who 
worship  Jesus  Christ  as  the  only  name  under 
heaven  by  which  men  must  be  saved.  You 
are  determined  to  preserve  the  institutions 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.       19 

and  the  civilization  which  the  Gospel  has 
created.  You  know  of  none  other  so  good. 
You  would  not  exchange  them  for  any  oth- 
ers. You  claim  for  them  ideal  perfection. 
That  claim  should  kindle  in  you  the  passion 
of  universal  conquest ;  and  that  claim  must 
be  discredited  unless  universal  conquest 
makes  it  good.  We  are  here,  as  every- 
where else,  in  the  grip  of  that  law  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  in  which  only  the 
fittest  can  survive.  The  fittest  cannot  re- 
tire within  its  own  province.  It  must  either 
subdue  all,  or  run  up  the  flag  of  surrender. 
I  cannot  here  enter  upon  the  relation  of 
Christianity  to  the  ethnic  religions.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  regard  them,  as  did  the 
early  Christian  apologists,  as  the  creations 
of  demons.  They  may  contain,  as  I  think 
they  do,  much  of  truth;  but  they  do  not 
contain  the  whole  truth,  they  do  not  con- 
tain the  truth  of  salvation,  which  is  the 
heart  of  religion.  The  ethnic  religions 
may  and  should  be  regarded  sympathetic- 
ally, as  disclosing  the  universal  search  of 
the  soul  after  God ;   but  whom  they  igno- 


20  The  World  for  Christ. 

rantly  worship  we  are  summoned  to  declare 
unto  them.  If  our  religion  be  only  an 
ethnic  product,  as  are  their  religions,  ours 
must  decay  as  theirs  have  decayed  and  are 
decaying.  We  must  choose  between  the 
two  alternatives — Christianity  everywhere 
or  Christianity  nowhere.  Self-preservation 
carries  in  it  the  necessity  of  universal  con- 
quest. 

The  golden  rule  summons  us  to  love  our 
neighbor  as  ourselves ;  and  the  whole  world 
is  our  neighbor.  Philanthropy  commits  us 
to  the  evangelization  of  the  world.  That 
was  a  remarkable  meeting  which  was  held 
in  the  last  week  of  January  in  Carnegie 
Hall,  New  York  city,  when  floor  and  gal- 
leries were  crowded  in  response  to  a  call  to 
protest  against  the  departure  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ballington  Booth,  which  had  been 
ordered  from  London.  The  Salvation  Army 
leaders  did  not  suggest  it,  nor  did  they  lend 
it  their  encouragement  and  support.  Had 
they  been  consulted,  the  meeting  would  not 
have  been  held.  It  was  a  spontaneous  up- 
rising, in  which  leaders  in  Church  and  so- 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        21 

ciety  gladly  gave  the  weight  of  their  pres- 
ence and  speech.  It  is  only  a  few  years 
since  the  Salvation  Army  was  regarded  with 
almost  universal  suspicion.  Its  members 
were  labeled  as  good-natured  cranks.  But 
the  cranks  have  won  universal  recognition 
for  their  commonsense,  their  patience,  their 
tact,  their  untiring  devotion,  their  splendid 
success.  They  attacked  the  slums.  They 
went  where  others  rarely  showed  their 
faces.  They  went  there  to  live.  They 
kept  at  their  task,  carrying  cleanliness  into 
filth,  order  into  confusion,  sweetness  into 
foulness,  the  speech  of  prayer  into  abodes 
of  drunkenness  and  blasphemy.  And  every- 
where they  told  men  and  women  of  Jesus, 
the  friend  of  sinners.  And  men  who  are 
not  easily  carried  away  by  enthusiasm,  and 
whose  Christianity  is  not  particularly  fer- 
vent, were  stirred  by  a  philanthropy  so 
brave  and  strong. 

It  is  nearly  forty  years  ago  since  Ecce 
Homo  was  read  with  eager  interest.  Per- 
haps its  most  distinguishing  feature  was 
the    contention    that    Jesus    Christ   intro- 


22  The  World  for  Christ. 

duced  the  era  of  the  *' enthusiasm  of  hu- 
manity." It  recalled  to  me  the  earlier 
statement  of  Dr.  Young,  that  the  keynote 
of  our  Lord's  ministry  was  the  neglected 
and  almost  forgotten  doctrine  of  the  soul, 
the  imperial  and  indefeasible  dignity  of 
man,  of  every  man.  Be  the  origin  of  that 
conviction  what  it  may,  trace  it  to  any 
source  you  please,  the  law  stands  clear  that 
you  are  bound  to  share  your  best  with  your 
neighbor,  to  lift  him  to  the  plane  upon  which 
you  stand.  It  is  the  business  of  the  strong 
to  bear  the  burdens  of  the  weak;  not  by 
making  them  confirmed  dependents,  but  by 
training  them  into  independence.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  wise  to  make  an  end  of  igno- 
rance; it  is  the  business  of  the  temperate 
and  sober  to  destroy  drunkenness ;  it  is  the 
business  of  the  good  and  pure  to  make  an 
end  of  wickedness  and  vice.  And  human- 
ity knows  no  territorial  divisions.  Man  is 
man  wherever  he  is  found ;  and  he  is  en- 
titled to  all  that  man  can  be.  We  may  not 
rest  until  all  men  have  the  very  best.  Isola- 
tion, its  deathblow  has  been  struck.      We 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        23 

certainly  may  not  be  behind  the  Roman 
audience  which  went  wild  with  applause 
when  Terence  uttered  his  famous  sentence, 
* '  I  am  a  man,  and  nothing  human  is  foreign 
to  me."  The  world  is  one  household,  where 
the  strong  are  the  hope  of  the  weak,  and 
the  weak  are  the  charge  of  the  strong.  If, 
then,  our  Christian  civilization  is  the  best 
which  the  world  has  seen,  we  are  bound,  as 
lovers  of  humanity,  to  make  it  regnant  in  all 
lands.  And  we  must  make  it  regnant  in  its 
principles,  not  merely  in  its  fruits ;  for  its 
fruits  cannot  be  made  secure  unless  the  seed 
be  made  to  take  root  and  grow.  Christian 
civilization  must  begin  with  the  preaching 
of  the  Gospel. 

Self-preservation  and  philanthropy  urge 
us  to  the  world's  evangelization.  But  there 
is  a  higher  motive  which  gives  wings  to  our 
feet.  It  is  the  command  of  the  Captain  of 
our  salvation.  We  are  under  marching 
orders.  The  question  is  not,  as  has  well 
been  said,  whether  the  heathen  can  be 
saved  unless  we  send  the  Gospel  to  them, 
but  ''whether  we  can  be  saved  if  we  do  not 


24  The  World  for  Christ. 

obey  Jesus  Christ."  To  receive  Jesus  as 
Lord,  and  to  walk  in  him  as  such,  is  the 
primary  and  permanent  mark  of  disciple- 
ship.  The  greatest  of  apostles  frequently 
described  himself  as  doidos,  the  slave  of 
Christ,  and  regarded  the  scars  upon  his 
body  as  the  brand  by  which  the  Christly 
ownership  was  visibly  sealed.  We  have 
been  bought  with  a  price.  We  live  not  unto 
ourselves,  but  unto  him  who  loved  us  and 
gave  himself  for  us.  I  need  not  multiply 
quotations.  Faith  in  Christ  means  complete 
and  abiding  surrender  to  him.  Its  per- 
petual interrogative  is  the  question  of  the 
persecutor  prostrate  on  the  highway  to 
Damascus,  '^  Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me 
to  do?"  The  answer  is  clear  and  unequiv- 
ocal :  *  '■  Disciple  all  nations ;  preach  the 
Gospel  to  every  creature. "  That  imperative, 
based  upon  the  sovereignty  secured  by  the 
atoning  death  on  the  cross  and  the  resur- 
rection from  the  grave,  silences  all  objec- 
tion, and  rebukes  all  hesitancy.  Be  the  re- 
sult what  it  may,  Christian  loyalty  permits 
no  option.     Go  we  must,  whether  welcome 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.       25 

or  not ;  go  we  must,  through  bristling  lines, 

through  dungeons  and  deaths,  into  palaces 

and  hovels,  defying  torture  and  the  sword. 

Tennyson's    famous   lines   mark   the   high 

level  of  Christian  obedience : 

"  Into  the  valley  of  death. 
Rode  the  six  hundred. 
Cannon  to  right  of  them. 
Cannon  to  left  of  them, 
Cannon  in  front  of  them, 
Volleyed  and  thundered. 
Stormed  at  with  shot  and  shell, 
Bravely  they  rode  and  well; 
Into  the  jaws  of  death, 
Into  the  mouth  of  hell. 
Rode  the  six  hundred. 
Theirs  not  to  make  reply. 
Theirs  not  to  reason  w^hy. 
Theirs  but  to  do  and  die. 
Into  the  valley  of  death. 
Rode  the  six  hundred." 

But  somebody  blundered  at  Balaklava,  else 
the  jaws  of  death  would  not  have  closed 
upon  the  six  hundred.  Our  Commander 
makes  no  mistakes,  imposes  no  arbitrary 
tests  upon  our  courage,  requires  nothing 
which  is  not  certain  of  achievement.  Every 
precept  is  fibered  upon  a  promise.  The 
command  is  a  prophecy  in  the  imperative 


26  The  World  for  Christ. 

mood.  In  the  perspective  of  inspired  vision 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world  are  already  the 
kingdoms  of  God  and  of  his  Christ.  And 
with  Paul  the  highest  motive  is  not  the 
mere  authority  with  which  Christ  is  in- 
vested. The  ''love  of  Christ''  constrains 
him — siinechei — ''holds  me  together,  pre- 
vents me  from  falling  to  pieces,  holds  me 
completely,  urges  me,  impels  me,  gives 
steadiness  and  strength  to  my  conviction 
and  endeavor."  It  is  Christ's  love  for  men 
of  which  he  speaks.  That  forces  upon  him 
the  judgment  that  the  death  of  one  in  be- 
half of  all  can  only  mean  that  all  died.  It 
is  as  if  all  had  been  nailed  to  the  tree ;  it  is 
as  if  all  had  been  buried  ;  it  is  as  if  all  had 
been  raised  from  the  sepulcher;  it  is  as  if 
all  had  been  crowned.  All,  not  merely  the 
elect.  All,  not  merely  such  as  repent  and 
believe.  The  apostle  makes  no  such  qualifi- 
cation. He  believed  and  taught  a  race  re- 
demption. The  world  is  a  lost  world;  but 
it  is  also  a  redeemed  world.  It  shares  in 
the  universal  apostasy,  but  it  also  shares  in 
the  universal  rescue.     Of  course,  in   both 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        27 

cases  the  process  is  a  moral  one.  Men  are 
not  sinners  against  their  will;  men  are  not 
saved  without  their  will.  Neither  the  guilt 
of  Adam,  nor  the  grace  of  Christ,  is  me- 
chanically imputed,  by  some  occult  ar- 
rangement, or  constitution,  or  covenant; 
nor  is  either  matter  of  mysterious  infusion. 
Neither  sinner  nor  saint  is  such  by  carnal 
descent,  nor  by  eternal  predestination. 
Whatever  man  is,  he  is  by  voluntary  agency. 
But  this  does  not  militate  against  the  doc- 
trine of  a  real  universal  redemption.  Where 
sin  hath  abounded,  grace  doth  much  more 
abound.  The  economy  of  redemption  is 
primary  and  universal,  not  secondary  and 
partial.  The  Lamb  slain  from  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world  pictures  the  philosophy  of 
history.  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the 
world  unto  himself.  The  world  is  a  re- 
deemed world.  Every  soul  is  a  saved  soul, 
though  it  sink  into  eternal  perdition.  The 
path  into  the  deepest  hell  lies  over  the  body 
and  blood  of  Jesus  Christ.  No  man  is  lost 
except  by  an  act  of  spiritual  apostasy.  He 
must  fall  from  the  grace  which  is  in  Christ 


28  The  World  for  Christ. 

Jesus.     He  must  wither  upon  the  vine  into 
which  he  has  been  grafted. 

At  this  point,  the  Pauline  theodicy  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  is  most  instructive. 
Theunbeliefof  the  Jewpained  him, filled  him 
with  great  heaviness  and  continual  sorrow  of 
heart.  He  declared  with  the  utmost  solemni- 
ty that  he  would  not  even  shrink  from  eternal 
personal  perdition  in  their  behalf,  were  it 
necessary.  But  he  goes  on  to  show  that  no 
such  sacrifice  is  necessary.  His  grief  does 
not  sink  into  despair,  because  the  gifts  and 
calling  of  God  are  without  repentance.  The 
unbelief  of  Israel  does  not  mean  its  per- 
dition. The  rejection  of  the  Jew  does  not 
mean  his  abandonment.  Israel,  too,  shall 
be  saved ;  all  Israel,  Israel  as  a  nation,  and 
its  restoration  shall  be  as  life  from  the  dead. 
So  the  wonderful  logic  marches,  until  the 
cry  of  agony,  with  which  the  ninth  chapter 
opens,  is  lost  in  the  triumphant  doxology 
with  which  the  eleventh  chapter  closes. 
And  then  comes  the  eager  exhortation :  *'  I 
beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the 
mercies  of  God,  that  ye  present  your  bodies 


The  Authority  to  be  Recognized.        29 

a  living"  sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable  unto  God, 
which  is  your  reasonable  service."  The 
force  of  this  word  therefore  transfigures 
the  duty  of  consecration  into  an  unspeak- 
able privilege.  The  mercies oi  God!  These 
are  the  pulse  of  his  absolute  authority.  His 
law  is  great  and  majestic ;  but  his  eternal 
love  in  the  law  is  greater  and  more  majestic. 
The  categorical  imperative  points  the  way 
to  what  must  and  shall  be.  ''  If  conscience," 
wrote  Bishop  Butler,  "•  had  might,  as  it  has 
right,  it  would  rule  the  world."  He  might 
have  added,  ''if  it  has  right,  it  will  rule  the 
world."  Veritas praevalebit.  In  every  ougJit 
there  hides  the  omnipotence  of  God.  The 
prophets  are  poets,  and  the  poets  are 
prophets. 

"Careless   seems    the   great    Avenger;  history's    pages 

but  record 
One  death-grapple  in  the  darkness   'tvvixt  old  systems 

and  the  word; 
Truth  forever   on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on   the 

throne, 
Yet    that    scaffold    sways  the   future,    and,  behind   the 

dim  unknown, 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above 

his  own." 
3 


30  The  World  for  Christ. 

Jesus  Christ  bids  us  disciple  all  nations. 
That  is  his  command,  which  incarnates  the 
travail  of  his  soul,  and  he  shall  see  of  the 
travail  of  his  soul,  and  be  satisfied.  He 
teaches  us  to  pray  "  Thy  kingdom  come. 
Thy  will  be  done  on  earth,  as  it  is  in 
heaven;"  and  he  assures  us  that  whatever 
we  ask  in  his  name  shall  be  granted  to  us. 
Let  us  fall  into  line,  and  close  up  the  ranks, 
under  the  flaming  banner  of  bis  crimson 
cross,  the  unfurling  of  which  meant  the 
occupation  of  all  continents  and  isles  of  the 
sea !  Self-preservation  urges  us  to  the  task 
of  the  world's  conversion ;  philanthropy 
adds  its  mighty  imperative ;  the  trump  of 
tbe  incarnate  Son  of  God  sounds  the  com- 
manding charge ;  and  the  eternal  purpose 
of  God  makes  our  march  a  triumphal  pro- 
cession through  the  very  gates  of  hell ! 


tTbe  ficlD  to  be  Mon 


II. 

The  Field  to  be  Won* 

WE  have  considered  the  Authority 
under  whose  inspiration  we  are 
charged  with  the  universal  diffusion  of  the 
Christian  faith,  and  we  have  found  that 
there  can  be  no  evasion  of  the  responsibility 
of  the  task.  The  seal  upon  our  commission 
silences  all  objection.  We  can  repudiate 
the  task  only  by  treason  to  Jesus  Christ. 
We  cannot  claim  to  be  his  friends  and  dis- 
ciples if  we  refuse  or  hesitate  to  do  what  he 
commands.  That  should  be  enough.  That 
is  enough.  Obedience,  however,  is  not 
blind,  and  enthusiasm  gains  in  depth  and 
intensity  in  proportion  as  the  rationality  of 
its  endeavor  is  vindicated.  It  is  not  a  four- 
fold reason,  or  four  separate  and  confluent 
reasons,  which  I  have  brought  under  re- 
view, but  a  single  reason,  disclosing  the 
absoluteness  of  its  authority  by  its  agree- 
ment with  the  eternal  purpose  of  God,  as 
disclosed  in  revelation,  and  by  its  perfect 


34  The  World  for  Christ. 

congruity  with  the  determining  law  of  his- 
tory. There  could  have  been  no  other 
command.  Its  limitation  would  have  dis- 
credited it,  and  annulled  the  obligation  to 
obedience;  for  the  very  nature  of  moral 
law  is  such  as  to  permit  of  no  restriction. 
It  must  rule  all,  or  it  can  rule  none.  There 
is  no  alternative  between  universal  collapse 
and  universal  sovereignty.  There  can  be 
no  concordats  or  compromises;  uncondi- 
tional surrender  is  the  rallying  cry  and 
watchword  of  every  **  ought.'"  For,  of  law, 
as  Hooker  says,  ''  no  less  can  be  acknowl- 
edged than  that  her  seat  is  in  the  bosom  of 
God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world ; 
all  things  in  heaven  and  earth  do  her  hom- 
age, the  very  least  as  feeling  her  care,  and 
the  greatest  as  not  exempted  from  her 
power.'* 

If  that  be  true,  it  is  plain  that  a  moral 
imperative  must  disclose  its  inherent  ra- 
tionality, and  vindicate  its  authority  by  the 
universality  of  its  enforcement.  It  must 
be  structural,  pervasive,  aggressive,  subdu- 
ing.    I  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  in 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  35 

any  comparison  of  religions,  Christianity 
embodies  the  absolute  truth ;  that  its  repre- 
sentations of  God  and  of  man,  and  of  man's 
redemption  by  God  through  Jesus  Christ, 
are  eternally  fixed  and  unalterable.  It  is 
the  only  religion  whicli  is  historically  true. 
That  assumption,  however,  can  be  made 
good  only  by  its  universal  and  exclusive 
sovereignty.  It  will  be  challenged  at  every 
step.  It  ought  to  be  challenged  at  every 
step.  Not  one  of  us  should  wish  its  triumph 
to  be  an  easy  one,  if  we  could  have  it  so ; 
and  we  cannot  have  it  so,  however  much  we 
may  wish  it.  The  law  of  the  survival  of 
the  fittest  is  a  beneficent  law;  and  that 
which  is  fittest  proves  itself  to  be  such  only 
by  its  survival,  by  standing  crowned,  reg- 
nant, and  unscathed  over  the  graves  of  its 
competitors.  No  scientific  theory  can  sur- 
vive unless  it  can  secure  universal  recogni- 
tion. No  philosophical  system  can  survive 
unless  it  can  gain  universal  acceptance. 
No  religion  can  maintain  its  foothold  within 
the  most  restricted  limits  unless  it  can  belt 
the  globe  with  its  sovereignty.     The  law  is 


36  The  World  for  Christ. 

as  inexorable  as  that  there  can  be  but  one 
multiplication  table. 

I  recur  to  this  because  there  is  a  dispo- 
sition in  some  quarters  to  regard  Chris- 
tianity as  one  among  many  religions, 
with  mythical  or  legendary  or  specula- 
tive elements  of  its  own;  purer  than  any 
other  religion,  but  capable  of  being  en- 
riched from  other  sources;  and  destined,  in 
friendly  partnership  with  other  religions, 
to  issue  in  a  new  and  ultimate  religion. 
Others  are  disposed  to  regard  religion  as  a 
purely  ethnic  product,  a  matter  of  national 
custume  and  behavior,  v/hich  each  people 
is  to  be  encouraged  to  cultivate  in  its  own 
way,  the  resultant  blending  issuing  in  a 
most  charming  picturesqueness.  Pagan 
Rome  made  trial  of  this  religious  cosmopol- 
itanism and  opened  its  Pantheon  to  all  the 
gods,  and  amxong  them  a  place  would  not 
have  been  refused  to  Jesus  Christ.  But 
this  cosmopolitan  recognition  of  all  the 
gods  brought  them  all  into  contempt.  The 
universal  coronation  was  a  universal  degra- 
dation.    The  equality  of  religions  was  the 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  37 

death  of  religion.  Mohammed  was  right, 
**  There  can  be  but  one  God,  and  there  can 
be  but  one  prophet  of  God."  Any  religion 
must  disappear  which  does  not  march  under 
that  banner,  and  which  does  not  compel 
every  other  flag  to  dip  its  colors. 

There  are  only  two  alternatives,  either  all 
present  religions  must  disappear,  or  one 
among  the  existing  religions  must  secure  uni- 
versal and  exclusive  lodgment.  A  brother- 
hood of  discordant  religions  there  cannot  be. 
And  an  ultimate  religion, displacing  all  pres- 
ent religions,  Christianity  included,  displac- 
ing all  sacred  books,  the  Bible  included, must 
make  provision  for  some  prophet  who  shall 
outrank  not  only  Socrates  and  Confucius 
and  Sakya-Muni,  but  Moses  and  Jesus 
Christ.  The  new  religion  must  rise  out  of 
the  ashes  of  all  existing  religions.  Such  a 
view  not  only  cuts  the  nerve  of  Christian 
missions ;  it  cuts  the  nerve  of  all  Christian 
faith.  Christianity  ceases,  upon  such  a  the- 
ory, to  have  any  authority  over  anybody. 
Its  preservation  anywhere  is  conditioned  by 
its  sovereignty  everywhere. 


38  The  World  for  Christ. 

Philanthropy,  too,  urges  us  to  do  what 
self-preservation  makes  necessary.  The 
good  which  we  would  keep  for  ourselves 
we  are  under  obligation  to  impart  to 
all  our  neighbors.  And  these  considera- 
tions are  enforced  by  the  view,  which 
is  peculiar  to  Christianity,  that  the  pur- 
pose of  redemption  is  logically  antece- 
dent to  the  purpose  of  creation,  that  the 
goal  of  history  is  the  redemption  of  man. 
In  the  eternal  prevision  and  purpose  of  God 
the  world  lost  in  sin  is  a  world  once  for  all 
redeemed  in  Jesus  Christ.  The  command 
of  Christ  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  every 
creature  voices  that  eternal  purpose,  and 
pledges  the  moral  omnipotence  of  God  to 
the  certainty  that  obedience  to  it  shall  not 
recoil  in  disaster  and  defeat.  Emerson  ad- 
vises us  to  *'  hitch  our  wagon  to  a  star,"  to 
ally  ourselves  with  those  forces  in  nature 
and  in  history  which  maintain  their  eternal 
poise.  Such  coursers  never  tire,  and  are 
never  uncertain  of  footing.  Over  the  rough- 
est paths  and  along  the  edges  of  the  most 
perilous  precipices  they  carry  us  with  steadi- 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  39 

ness  and  in  safety.  And  among  all  these 
stars  the  Star  of  Bethlehem  has  the  eternal 
preeminence.  They  who  obey  Jesus  Christ 
tread  the  path  of  victory,  and  make  their 
work  enduring. 

The  authority,  then,  is  unquestioned.  It 
is  invested  with  all  the  elements  which  jus- 
tify a  glad  and  eager  obedience.  Let  us 
proceed  to  consider  the  Field  which  we 
are  to  win.  Jesus  Christ,  incarnating  both 
the  power  and  the  wisdom  of  God,  sends  us. 
Where  does  he  send  us  to?  If  we  answer 
the  question  geographically,  nothing  needs 
to  be  added  to  what  has  already  been  said. 
The  world  is  our  parish,  as  John  Wesley 
said  that  it  was  his.  There  is  no  land 
which  is  not  our  province ;  there  is  no  race 
which  we  may  neglect ;  there  are  no  classes 
which  we  may  avoid.  It  is  evident,  too, 
that  the  division  of  Christian  missions  into 
home  and  foreign  departments  is  formal 
rather  than  real.  It  is  convenient  for  pur- 
poses of  administration,  but  beyond  that  it 
has  no  value.  Our  obligation  to  Christian- 
ize the  Empire  State  or  the  Western  Conti- 


40  The  World  for  Christ. 

nent  is  not  one  whit  greater  and  more 
pressing  than  our  duty  to  evangelize  Asia 
and  Africa.  No  man  is  at  liberty  to  con- 
centrate all  his  interest  upon  one  specific 
place,  and  be  indifferent  to  all  else.  Local- 
ization in  endeavor,  and  even  in  gifts,  has  its 
uses,  for  no  man  can  do  everything;  but 
the  localization  of  personal  enlistment  should 
always  be  under  the  law  of  universal  con- 
quest. There  is  but  one  missionary  spirit, 
the  spirit  of  the  world's  redemption.  As 
the  late  Dr.  Williams  so  beautifully  said,  in 
his  comment  on  the  plural  number  in  the 
pronouns  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  **  Religion 
is  indeed  a  personal  thing,  but  it  is  not 
therefore  a  principle  of  social  isolation.  We 
must  visit  the  closet ;  but  into  the  closet  we 
must  carry  the  sympathies  of  the  race,  and 
bare  before  our  God  a  heart  that  can  take 
in  the  world  in  its  wide  reach  of  interces- 
sion and  fraternal  regard."  We  are  not  to 
be  ' '  egotists  in  our  piety  and  monopolists 
in  our  prayers."  And  the  principle  holds 
true  of  all  Christian  work.  Specific  in 
form,  it  must  also  be  cosmopolitan  in  spirit 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  41 

and  outlook.  Whatever  we  do  we  are  to 
do  for  Christ's  sake,  and  what  we  do  for 
Christ's  sake  we  do  for  the  world's  sake. 
There  must  be  Christian  cosmopolitanism 
in  our  local  service,  and  there  must  be  local 
service  in  our  Christian  cosmopolitanism. 
Every  one  of  us  has  a  specific  vocation,  and 
a  definite  place  in  which  to  discharge  that 
vocation ;  but  we  are  to  discharge  it  in  the 
interest  of  a  service  which  has  the  world 
for  its  field. 

Two  diametrically  opposite  dangers  con- 
front us  ?iere.  We  may  forget  the  world 
in  our  specific  tasks,  influenced  by  local 
attachments  or  racial  affinities  or  purely 
patriotic  motives,  while  the  cry  of  the 
heathen  world  falls  upon  dull  ears.  Such 
are  the  people  who  tell  us  that  they  are 
interested  in  home  but  not  in  foreign 
missions.  But  if  we  evangelize  our  own 
neighborhoods  for  Christ's  sake,  we  do  it 
for  the  world's  sake.  Home  evangelization 
must,  in  the  outcome,  be  foreign  evangeli- 
zation ;  and,  therefore,  it  should  be  such 
in    initiative   and   outlook.     On  the    other 


42  The  World  for  Christ. 

hand,  it  is  possible  to  be  so  absorbed  in  dis- 
tant communities,  and  in  peoples  of  strange 
speech,  as  to  become  indifferent  to  the  des- 
titution which  environs  and  attends  us,  giv- 
ing occasion  to  the  sneering  retort  that  we 
leave  our  own  children  to  go  ragged  be- 
cause we  are  so  busy  sewing  for  the  savages. 
Charity  does  begin  at  home,  but  it  does  not 
end  there;  and,  what  is  more,  it  is  not 
charity  even  at  home  unless  the  pulse  beat 
for  all  the  world.  The  field  is  the  world, 
and  you  have  your  own  particular  plat  to 
plow  and  seed  down  and  keep.  Work  over 
against  your  own  door,  but  do  it,  as  did  Ne- 
hemiah's  associates,  in  order  that  all  the 
breaches  in  the  encompassing  wall  may  be 
repaired.  Our  immediate  duty  is  to  do  that 
for  which  we  are  fitted,  and  which  lies  near- 
est to  us ;  our  ultimate  duty,  the  aim  of  all 
specific  endeavor,  is  the  world's  salvation. 

The  political  description  of  the  field  to  be 
won,  however,  is  more  important  than  its 
geographical  division.  I  call  it  political  for 
want  of  a  better  term.  The  feature  which 
I  have  in   mind  divides  the   mission  field 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  43 

into  city  and  country,  and  the  city  is  a  polit- 
ical rather  than  a  geographical  creation. 
Our  Lord  began  his  ministry  in  rural  Gali- 
lee, and  ended  it  in  Jerusalem.  After  his 
resurrection  he  commanded  his  disciples  to 
preach  repentance  and  remission  of  sins  in 
his  name  among  all  nations,  "'  beginning  at 
Jeriisalcmy  The  command  was  repeated  at 
his  ascension.  From  Jerusalem  the  disciples 
were  to  go  unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth.  The  city  was  made  the  point  of  de- 
parture and  the  citadel  of  strength. 

Paul's  missionary  journeys  were  shaped 
on  that  plan.  It  was  at  Antioch  that  he  was 
set  apart  with  Barnabas  to  his  special  task ; 
and  it  was  in  Ephesus  and  Corinth  that  he 
lingered  longest,  with  his  heart  set  upon 
Rome.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  the  word 
''pagan''  means  *'a  rustic;"  and  history 
tells  us  that  paganism  lingered  longest  in 
the  country  districts,  even  beyond  the  age 
of  Constantine.  The  coinage  of  this  word 
''paganism''  dates  to  the  period  when  it 
was  used  to  describe  the  rural  religion, when 
Christianity  had  become  the  religion  of  the 


44  The  World  for  Christ. 

cities.  It  was  not  the  country  which  gave 
Christianity  to  the  cities,  but  the  cities 
which  carried  Christianity  into  the  country 
districts.  City  evangelization  was  the  first 
problem  with  which  the  apostolic  and  the 
postapostolic  age  grappled.  Rome,  Alex- 
andria, Antioch,  Lyons,  Constantinople, 
Carthage,  were  the  strongholds  of  the  new 
religion,  giving  form  to  its  theology  and 
government. 

The  preeminence  of  the  city  is  not  pe- 
culiar to  modern  life.  It  is  more  conspic- 
uous to  our  eyes,  and  perhaps  the  drift 
is  accelerated  in  our  time-  but  the  city 
has  always  been  conspicuous  and  control- 
ling. The  buried  dynasties  of  the  Nile 
and  the  Euphrates  were  those  of  vast  and 
imperial  cities.  Greece  Avas  a  confederacy 
of  cities.  Rome  held  the  scepter  of  the 
world,  making  all  lands  contributors  to  her 
municipal  magnificence.  The  mediaeval 
cities  were  the  asylums  and  fortresses  of 
civil  and  commercial  liberty.  I  have  some- 
times wondered  whether  Cowper  would 
ever  have  v/ritten  his  famous  lines,  ' '  God 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  45 

made  the  country  and  man  made  the  town," 
could  he  have  foreseen  the  philosophy  which 
some  associate  with  them.  They  laud  the 
country  and  curse  the  city.  They  deprecate 
the  growth  of  municipalities  as  foreshadow- 
ing decay  in  morals  and  religion.  Man  made 
the  town.  Yes,  but  who  made  the  man  by 
whom  the  town  is  made?  Is  the  social  in- 
stinct an  excrescence  or  a  disease?  The 
city,  as  a  political  institution,  is  perfectly 
legitimate,  the  inevitable  and  divinely  sanc- 
tioned precipitate  of  the  social  instincts. 
In  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  at  home  and 
abroad,  the  city  must  engage  our  most  se- 
rious attention.  In  them  Christianity  must 
be  made  dominant  and  aggressive ;  and  if 
we  find  our  machinery  inoperative  at  this 
focal  point,  we  cannot  be  in  too  great  haste 
to  remedy  the  defect.  The  old  story  will 
repeat  itself — the  city  will  give  religion  to 
the  country,  not  the  country  to  the  city,  just 
as  the  country  follows  the  fashions  of  the 
city,  not  the  city  those  of  the  country. 

It  is  important  to  remember  this  at  a  time 
when  the  subject  of  municipal  government 


46  The  World  for  Christ. 

is  engaging  wide  and  earnest  attention. 
Few  will  be  inclined  to  challenge  the  ver- 
dict of  James  Bryce,  that  '*  the  government 
of  cities  is  the  one  conspicuous  failure  of 
the  United  States."  At  that  point  our 
popular  mstitutions  are  more  seriously 
threatened  than  at  any  other.  Brooklyn 
and  New  York  now  contain  nearly  one  half, 
if  not  quite,  of  the  entire  population  of  the 
Empire  State.  Our  elections  have  been  for 
many  years  a  fierce  wrestle  between  these 
two  cities  and  the  rest  of  the  State.  It  is 
this  which  makes  municipal  reform  of  the 
highest  political  importance  to  the  common- 
wealth. It  would  be  a  most  deplorable  and 
dangerous  innovation  to  fence  off  the  cities 
as  independent  political  units,  carrying 
Home  Rule  into  isolation.  There  must  be 
free  play  between  the  urban  and  the  rural 
populations  for  the  safety  of  each.  The 
entire  State  of  New  York  is  interested  in 
the  government  of  its  cities,  for  that  will 
be  the  drumbeat  to  which  the  entire  com- 
monwealth keeps  step.  Patriotic  states- 
manship  recognizes   this.     The    Christian 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  47 

Church  cannot  afford  to  be  less  vigilant 
and  untiring.  The  city  is  the  great  field 
to  be  won.  In  the  city  the  Church  must 
come  to  the  front  in  all  humanitarian  agen- 
cies and  in  all  moral  reforms.  It  must 
seize  the  leadership  in  the  education  and 
quickening  of  the  public  conscience.  And 
it  must  do  all  this  for  the  sake  of  the  nation 
and  of  the  world.  Be  it  at  home  or  abroad, 
the  city  must  be  captured  for  Christ.  We 
are  to  plant  the  Gospel  everywhere ;  but  it 
is  a  wise  Christian  strategy,  divinely  com- 
mended and  sanctioned  by  all  history,  to 
mass  our  regenerating  forces  in  the  great 
cities  of  the  globe  for  the  evangelization  of 
the  world. 

What  I  have  called  the  political  descrip- 
tion of  the  field  to  be  won  is  more  helpful 
to  our  present  inquiry  than  its  geographical 
delineation.  But  more  important  than 
either  is  what  I  may  call  the  dynamic  sur- 
vey. The  real  field  to  be  won  is  not  vis- 
ible, but  invisible.  It  is  the  domain  of 
conviction  and  of  conduct.  The  weap- 
ons  of  our   warfare  are  spiritual,  because 


48  The  World  for  Christ. 

the  territory  to  be  conquered  and  held  is 
spiritual. 

That  compels  the  Church  to  qualify  it- 
self for  and  to  seize  the  place  of  intel- 
lectual leadership.  It  is  not  the  voca- 
tion of  Christianity  to  prescribe  the  limits 
and  the  methods  of  scientific  research, 
nor  to  formulate  a  system  of  metaphys- 
ics. The  Gospel  does  not  tell  men  ' '  how 
the  heavens  go,  but  how  men  may  go 
to  heaven.'*  Still,  in  its  own  peculiar 
province,  Christianity  must  command  the 
unqualified  assent  of  the  intellect.  It  must 
not  only  exhort,  it  must  convince.  In  his- 
tory, in  literary  criticism,  in  personal  verifi- 
cation or  experience,  it  must  make  good  its 
claims.  Hence  the  Church  has  always  been 
the  friend  and  promoter  of  the  highest  edu- 
cation. Its  schools  at  Alexandria  and  at 
Antioch  were  famous  while  yet  persecution 
raged.  The  universities  outrank  the  cathe- 
drals in  the  influence  which  they  have  ex- 
erted. Oxford  and  Cambridge  have  but- 
tressed every  chapel  and  meetinghouse  in 
the  British  empire.      Our  first   American 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  49 

colleges  were  founded  to  prepare  young 
men  for  the  Christian  ministry;  the  vast 
majority  of  them  at  present  are  under  re- 
ligious control ;  and  they  are  mainly  sup- 
ported by  Christian  gifts.  This  movement 
in  the  line  of  intellectual  leadership  is  in 
the  very  fiber  of  the  Christian  faith.  The 
sword  of  truth  is  the  only  weapon  upon 
which  the  Church,  under  God,  relies.  The 
time  can  never  come  when  the  very  best 
intellectual  equipment  can  be  dispensed 
with  in  the  service  of  the  Christian  Church. 
The  demand  in  every  department  is  not 
only  for  more  men  and  women,  but  for 
more  thoroughly  furnished  men  and  women. 
The  preachers  who  go  begging  for  places 
are  the  preachers  who  cannot  command  at- 
tention ;  who  have  nothing  to  say,  or  else 
do  not  know  how  to  say  it.  The  men  who 
cross  the  dead  line  at  fifty  or  sixty  are  the 
men  who  have  succumbed  to  laziness ;  who 
have  exchanged  the  fighting  armor  for  the 
gown  and  slippers.  There  must  be  intellec- 
tual vivacity  and  virility,  an  intellectual  in- 
cisiveness  and  force  which  cleave  their  own 


50  The  World  for  Christ. 

way,  if  the  Christian  message  is  to  win  its 
way.  For  it  is  the  thoughts  of  men  which 
are  to  be  brought  into  the  obedience  of 
Jesus  Christ;  and  none  of  us  should  be- 
grudge the  time  and  the  work  which  will 
qualify  us  for  the  intellectual  leadership, 
without  which  the  world  cannot  be  won. 

But  the  truth  is  one  and  singular.  It  does 
not  split  up  its  adherents  into  hostile  camps. 
And  this  suggests  the  further  thought,  that 
Christianity  must  conquer  its  own  antago- 
nisms before  it  can  sweep  over  the  world 
with  resistless  might.  The  ancient  Greek 
Church  presents  us  with  the  spectacle  of 
Christianity  driven  out  of  its  ancestral 
home  by  the  fanatic  disciples  of  Islam, 
through  the  interminable  controversies 
which  had  destroyed  its  unity  and  spiritual- 
ity. There  is  no  other  judgment  of  God  in 
this  than  that  v/hich  is  the  inevitable  curse 
upon  all  sectarian  hostility.  I  say  ''sec- 
tarian hostility,"  not  ''denominational  di- 
visions." For  one,  I  care  very  little  for 
what  is  called  "organic  Christian  unity;" 
the  universal  adoption  of  the  same  theolog- 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  51 

ical  creed,  and  of  the  same  ecclesiastical 
polity.  It  is  the  little  things,  in  ritual  and 
government,  which  keep  us  apart.  When 
we  come  to  the  great  essentials,  the  same 
Gospel  voices  itself  in  all  the  creeds  from 
Nicea  down  to  the  present  time.  The  thing 
to  be  done  is  for  Christian  men  to  stop  de- 
nouncing each  other,  and  for  them,  instead, 
to  give  each  other  the  right  hand  of  Chris- 
tian fellowship.  The  phrase  * '  uncovenanted 
mercies  of  God  "  may  well  be  dropped  from 
the  Christian  vocabulary ;  for  there  will  be 
not  a  few  who  would  say  with  an  irate  dis- 
putant that  he  ''would  rather  be  damned 
than  to  be  saved  by  a  mercy  which  had  no 
covenant  in  it."  There  must  be  Christian 
recognition,  without  the  condition  of  eccle- 
siastical surrender,  compromise,  or  absorp- 
tion. That  is  surely  coming ;  coming  be- 
cause the  unity  is  not  something  which  has 
to  be  made,  but  because  it  is  simply  waiting 
for  honest  and  fearless  recognition.  We 
arc  one ;  the  fight  we  have  on  hand  is  to  say 
that  we  are  one  in  spite  of  our  differences ; 
and  when  we  say  that,  we  shall  not  Und  it 


52  The  World  for  Christ. 

difficult  to  exercise  interdenominational 
courtesy  and  fraternity  in  the  prosecution 
of  our  common  work.  The  passion  which 
must  master  us  is  that  the  world  shall  be 
won  to  Christ ;  and  when  that  motive  se- 
cures sole  and  supreme  sovereignty,  all 
sectarian  jealousies  and  suspicions  will  for- 
ever vanish;  and  not  until  they  do  vanish, 
not  until  cooperation  takes  the  place  of 
competition,  can  we  expect  the  golden  age 
of  missionary  enterprise. 

There  is  an  industrial  problem,  too,  with 
which  we  must  be  prepared  to  grapple,  if 
the  world  in  its  dynamic  forces  is  to  be  won 
to  Christ.  There  is  an  ethics  of  production, 
and  an  ethics  of  distribution ;  and  the  only 
ethical  system  which  we  can  acknowledge  is 
that  of  Jesus  Christ.  Man  is  a  moral  per- 
sonality to  the  core  of  his  being,  and  to  the 
extremest  circumference  of  his  action  ;  every 
man  is  such  a  moral  personality;  and, 
therefore,  all  compacts  are  seriously  invalid 
which  do  not  treat  him  as  such.  He  retains 
his  moral  dignity  in  any  sphere  of  work 
which  he  may  choose,  or  to  which  he  may 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  53 

be  assigned.  The  relations  of  employer 
and  employee,  of  master  and  servant,  are 
not  relations  of  essential  superiority  and  in- 
feriority, any  more  than  the  relations  of 
parents  and  children.  Man  is  man  at  the 
bottom  of  the  industrial  regime,  and  he  is 
no  more  than  man  at  the  top.  It  may  even 
be  that  differences  in  rank  are  wholly  con- 
ventional, as  in  the  modern  battleships, 
where  it  has  been  said  the  rank  is  all  on 
deck,  and  the  brains  below  deck ;  or,  as  in 
State  departments,  where  the  head  is  de- 
pendent upon  some  subordinate. 

Christianity  does  not  undertake  to  assume 
formal  supervision  over  the  field  of  indus- 
trial activity.  But  it  does  insist  upon  certain 
principles  as  fundamental  and  determining. 
One  is  the  essential  equality  of  all  men  be- 
fore God,  as  bearing  his  image  and  re- 
deemed by  his  grace.  The  products  of 
labor  are  merchantable,  their  value  de- 
termined b}^  the  law  of  supply  and  demand  ; 
but  the  laborer  is  not  an  article  of  sale  and 
purchase,  and  that  not  only  invests  him 
with  personal  liberty,   but  entitles  him  to 


54  The  World  for  Christ. 

humane  treatment.  A  second  principle 
upon  which  the  Gospel  lays  emphasis  is  the 
universal  obligation  of  productive  industry. 
It  proclaims  the  duty,  rather  than  the 
dignity,  of  work.  The  dignity  is  in  the 
duty.  Only  the  worker  wears  the  crown ; 
the  idler  is  a  clog  and  nuisance,  whether  he 
be  a  tramp  in  rags  or  a  millionaire  spend- 
thrift. It  is  every  man's  duty  to  work,  and 
it  is  every  man's  duty  to  find  his  own  work. 
And  a  third  item  in  the  message  of  the 
Gospel  is  that  humanity  constitutes  a  real 
brotherhood,  in  which  the  good  of  all  is  to 
be  sought  by  each,  and  the  rights  of  all 
to  be  maintained  by  each.  Christianity, 
properly  speaking,  is  not  a  leveling  system. 
It  neither  levels  down,  nor  does  it  level  up. 
It  recognizes  the  essential  equality  in  the 
formal  differences,  and  the  formal  differ- 
ences in  the  essential  equality.  It  gauges 
the  man  by  what  he  is,  not  by  what  he  does 
or  has.  It  does  not  teach  a  doctrine  of 
solidarity  which  eliminates  personality ;  nor 
does  it  teach  a  doctrine  of  personality  which, 
makes  solidarity  an  empty  name.     In  the 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  55 

golden  rule  it  justifies  self-love,  and  it  en- 
joins universal  benevolence.  It  does  not 
cut  the  sinews  of  self-interest,  but  brings 
self-interest  within  the  domain  of  moral 
law  whose  scope  is  universal;  so  that  he 
who  injures  another,  or  is  indifferent  to 
him,  wounds  himself.  And  in  the  love 
which  it  requires  toward  all,  it  places  the 
emphasis  upon  the  moral  selfhood  of  each, 
thus  summoning  each  to  the  independence 
which  is  his  duty  and  his  dignity.  The 
Gospel  does  not  canonize  the  poor,  nor  does 
it  curse  the  rich.  It  has  the  same  message 
to  both.  It  honors  manhood,  and  enjoins 
manly  treatment.  And  upon  Christian 
manhood,  in  both  divisions  of  the  great  in- 
dustrial field,  it  lays  the  duty  of  cordial  co- 
operation. 

The  field  which  is  to  be  won  presents 
still  another  aspect.  There  are  political  as 
well  as  industrial  problems ;  and  both  classes 
of  problems  are  problems  dealing  with  man, 
which  makes  them  ethical,  and  brings  them 
under  the  law  of  Jesus  Christ.  Each  nation 
is  a  moral  personality,  not  in  the  sense  of  an 


56  The  World  for  Christ. 

independent  and  sovereign  existence  apart 
from  its  individual  citizens,  but  as  the  inte- 
gration of  a  body  of  convictions  and  princi- 
ples universally  accepted.  The  principles 
in  which  all  agree  constitute,  or  create,  the 
national  personality.  Written  or  unwritten, 
they  are  the  constitution  under  whicb  the 
nation  has  the  charter  of  its  existence  and 
continuance.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the 
diffusion  of  Christian  ideas  slowly  but  stead- 
ily molding  public  convictions,  must  pari 
passu  bring  legislation  and  methods  of 
public  administration  into  harmony  with 
Christian  ideals.  It  was  in  this  way  that 
slavery  disappeared  in  the  Roman  empire, 
and  that  the  fierce  gladiatorial  conflicts  were 
brought  to  an  end.  Therein  lies  the  secret 
pressure  under  which  in  all  civilized  lands 
serfdom  has  ceased.  That  has  driven  the 
swindling  lotteries  and  the  brutal  prize 
fighters*  rings  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
the  American  republic.  That  is  calling  a 
stern  halt  to  the  audacity  of  the  saloon  in 
its  defiance  of  all  lav/,  and  in  its  expressed 
determination   to  make  the  weekly  day  of 


The  Field  to  be  Won.  57 

rest  a  recurring  period  of  drunken  carousal. 
The  Christian  ideal  of  manhood  is  steadily 
leavening  public  opinion,  and  public  opinion 
shapes  the  formal  statute.  It  is  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  of  manhood,  too,  which  is  the 
mightiest  propagandist  of  free  institutions ; 
so  that  while  kings  retain  their  titles,  the 
people  are  the  power  behind  the  throne, 
and  popular  assemblies  act  as  a  check  upon 
irresponsible  authority.  The  Gospel  molds 
the  national  life.  And  it  proclaims  the 
fraternity  of  nations,  who  in  amicable  con- 
ference are  to  settle  their  differences  and 
disputes,  instead  of  flying  to  arms  upon  the 
slightest  provocation. 

Such  is  the  field  to  be  won.  The  great 
captains  of  history  never  dreamed  of  an  em- 
pire so  vast.  To  many,  even  now,  it  seems 
an  unsubstantial  dream.  But  to  this  con- 
quest we  are  committed  by  our  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ.  And  to  it  we  must  consecrate 
ourselves,  in  patience,  in  courage,  and  in 
the  assured  hope  of  final  and  glorious  suc- 
cess. 


Zl)c  IReeult  to  be  HcWeveJ) 


III. 

The  Result  to  be  Achieved^ 

YOU  have  a  right  to  demand  that  I  make 
clear  what  is  meant  by  the  Result 
which  the  prosecution  of  Christian  missions 
should  aim  to  secure,  as  distinguished  from 
the  Field  which  it  is  summoned  to  win  and 
hold.  The  difference  between  the  two  may- 
seem  to  be  only  verbal,  inasmuch  as  it  was 
contended  that  ih.Q  Field  is  not  geographical 
or  territorial,  but  political  and  moral, 
covering  the  dynamic  energies  by  which 
history  is  shaped.  It  is  man  who  is  to  be 
subdued,  not  the  place  in  which  he  lives. 
And  the  man  to  be  subdued  is  a  many- 
sided  being,  mentally  restless  and  inquisi- 
tive, with  social  impulses,  caught  and  held 
in  a  most  intricate  network  of  industrial 
activity,  and  set  in  political  relations  which 
create  the  commonwealth  and  contemplate 
the  federation  of  the  world.  Man  cannot 
be  touched  at  any  vital  point  of  his  nature 

without   being   touched   ultimately   at    all 
5 


62  The  World  for  Christ. 

points.  He  cannot  be  split  up  into  so  many 
sections,  separately  cultivated  and  mutually 
consenting'  not  to  interfere  with  each  other. 
As  my  revered  theological  teacher  used  to 
say,  man  is  not  a  modern  steamship,  di- 
vided into  water-tight  compartments,  sepa- 
rated by  bulkheads,  some  of  which  the  sea 
may  flood,  while  it  cannot  gain  entrance 
into  others.  Whatever  gains  entrance  se- 
cures sovereignty  over  the  whole  man.  No 
man  can  lonof  remain  Christian  in  heart  and 
pagan  in  head.  Philosophy  cannot  continue 
to  be  theistic,  if  science  be  atheistic.  Re- 
ligion cannot  make  the  cathedral  its  throne 
and  fortress,  if  the  Decalogue  and  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  may  be  bowed  out 
by  diplomats  and  statesmen. 

It  is  inevitable,  therefore,  that  religious 
convictions,  intelligently  accepted  and  firm- 
ly maintained,  crystallize  in  social,  indus- 
trial, and  political  institutions  which  re- 
flect the  faith.  Benjamin  Kidd  rendered 
good  service  when  he  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  religion  has  been  the  might- 
iest   factor    in    social  evolution,  and   must 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  63 

continue  so  to  be.  Professor  Drummond 
may  object  to  the  formal  logic  and  criti- 
cise the  phraseology,  but  when  he  modi- 
fies the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  by  the 
law  of  motherhood  as  among  the  higher 
forms  of  evolution,  the  concession  to  moral 
forces  in  the  shaping  of  social  history  is 
equally  significant.  Evolution  is  more  an 
ethical  than  a  natural  process ;  or,  to  state 
the  fact  more  correctly,  nature  at  the  core 
is  ethical.  The  living  God  works  in  and 
through  nature,  and  apart  from  him  nature 
would  neither  w^ork  nor  be.  My  only  ob- 
jection to  the  formula,  ' '  Natural  law  in  the 
spiritual  realm,"  is  that  it  states  the  truth 
in  an  inverted  form.  It  puts  the  cart  be- 
fore the  horse.  Law  has  its /ons  et  origo  in 
the  spiritual  realm,  and  thence  it  issues  to 
crystallize  and  rule  in  the  domain  of  nature. 
All  law  is  ethical  in  its  source  and  outwork- 
ing. The  universe,  from  center  to  circum- 
ference, from  star  dust  to  souls,  in  all  the 
provinces  and  ranges  of  being,  is  a  moral 
empire.  The  division  of  law  into  natural 
and  moral,  with  its  subdivisions  into  me- 


64  The  World  for  Christ. 

chanical  and  vital  and  economic  and  polit- 
ical, is  a  convenient  device  for  tabulation ; 
but  law  as  law  is  inherent  in  things  as  con- 
stituted, and  is  only  another  name  for  that 
rational  order  which  is  the  precipitate  of  the 
dynamic  reason  of  God.  So  Kepler  was 
right  when  he  described  the  astronomer  as 
a  man  who  ''thinks  God's  thoughts  after 
him."  This  is  the  endeavor  and  the  goal  of 
all  science. 

And  this  invests  all  law  with  the  same 
authority.  Whatever  its  form,  it  is  a  cate- 
gorical imperative.  The  laws  of  matter 
are  as  sacred  as  the  laws  of  mind.  The 
body,  no  less  than  the  soul,  is  the  tem- 
ple of  God;  and  neglect  or  abuse  of  it  is 
sacrilege  and  impiety.  And  if  all  law  is 
moral  at  root,  and  divine  in  the  outworking, 
it  is  plain  that  a  revolution  in  religious  con- 
victions must  issue  in  a  corresponding  revo- 
lution in  all  the  forms  of  human  life.  It  is 
equally  clear  that  social  and  institutional 
changes  are  most  directly  and  powerfully 
affected  through  changes  in  moral  ideals 
and  religious  convictions.    The  process  may 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  65 

be  too  slow  for  enthusiastic  reformers,  who 
would  bring  in  the  millennium  at  a  stroke, 
but  it  is  the  only  steady  and  sure  one.  The 
Gospel  is  like  leaven,  working  from  within 
outward,  and  leavening  the  whole  lump. 

The  leavening  of  all  forms  of  human  life 
is  the  ultimate  issue  of  Christian  evangel- 
ization. But  that  is  not  the  immediate  task 
committed  to  the  Christian  Church.  The 
three  measures  of  meal  represent  the 
Field  which  is  to  be  won ;  but  the  duty  en- 
joined is  to  insert  the  leaven,  leaving  it 
when  lodged  to  work  in  its  own  way.  There 
is  need  of  emphasizing  this  distinction  be- 
tween the  ultimate  result  and  the  immediate 
duty.  There  is  a  disposition  in  some 
quarters  to  make  the  vocation  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  and  of  the  Christian  preacher 
coextensive  with  formal  leadership  in  all 
needed  reforms.  If  lie  does  not  assume  the 
insignia  of  temporal  sovereignty,  he  must 
exercise  the  authority  of  secular  judgment. 
Beneath  his  plain  black  there  must  be  the 
royal  purple.  But  Jesus  declared  that  his 
kingdom  was  not  of  this  v/orld.     It  is  in  it, 


66  The  World  for  Clirist. 

and  destined  to  subdue  it;  but  in  securing 
the  universal  subjugation,  his  disciples  bear 
a  specific  part,  and  one  which  does  not 
adopt  secular  methods. 

Social  regeneration  is  a  vast  and  intri- 
cate product,  and  in  it  many  agencies  co- 
operate. The  moral  personality  of  each 
individual  must  be  taken  into  account. 
He  is  really  governed  only  when  he  is 
self-governed.  The  home  lias  its  divinely 
appointed  place  in  social  evolution ;  it  is, 
so  to  speak,  the  biological  unit,  and  must 
have  free  play.  The  school,  as  crystal- 
lizing in  its  courses  of  study  the  hard- 
learned  lessons  of  a  wide  and  long  experi- 
ence, has  its  peculiar  vocation,  with  which 
neither  State  nor  Church  should  officiously 
interfere.  The  State,  as  the  organ  of  social 
justice,  has  its  specific  problems,  and  with- 
in its  sphere  is  supreme.  Industrialism 
has  its  own  peculiar  province,  and  must  be 
left  free  to  work  out  its  own  salvation. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  divinely  insti- 
tuted confederacy  of  social  authorities  ;  and 
the  greatest  mischiefs  have  resulted  when 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  67 

one  has  invaded  the  province  of  the  other. 
The  State  has  suffered  when  the  priest  has 
leaped  into  the  saddle.  The  Church  has 
suffered  when  the  State  has  shaped  her 
creeds  or  directed  her  energies.  The  school 
has  suffered  when  either  politicians  or 
ecclesiastics  have  assumed  the  reins  of 
management.  The  home  has  been  de- 
graded when  legislation  has  undertaken  to 
destroy  its  monogamic  constitution,  either 
by  sanctioning  polygamy  or  by  facilitating 
divorce.  Industrial  prosperity  has  had  in 
legislative  interference  its  most  dangerous 
enemy.  The  ethical  energy  by  which  the 
social  regeneration  is  to  be  secured  w^orks 
in  and  through  many  agencies,  which, 
while  interdependent,  are  also  independent. 
Each  has  its  specific  task  under  the  general 
law  of  social  improvement.  The  Church  of 
Christ  in  this  confederacy  of  regenerating 
forces  is  the  historical  oro-an  of  relio^ion. 
To  bring  God  to  men,  and  men  to  God,  is 
her  specific  vocation.  To  preach  the  Gospel 
is  her  great  and  solitary  business ;  and  the 
more  rigidly  she  concentrates  her  energies 


68  The  World  for  Christ. 

within  this  channel,  the  more  powerfully 
will  she  leave  her  impress  upon  the  life  of 
the  age ;  for,  in  doing  that,  she  touches  the 
fontal  springs  of  social  activity.  She  stands 
as  the  vicegerent  of  God,  to  proclaim  his 
moral  majesty  and  authority ;  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  Jesus  Christ,  to  preach  his 
Gospel  of  redemption  and  his  eternal  king- 
ship. 

It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  while  the  world 
in  all  its  dynamic  energies  is  the  Field  which 
we  are  to  subdue,  our  immediate  duty  is  to 
secure  the  conversion  to  Christ  of  the  indi- 
vidual. We  must  begin  with  man  as  a 
moral  personality,  who  needs  to  be  born 
again,  or  better,  born  from  above.  The  lower 
impulses  shape  his  character  and  conduct ; 
not  necessarily  the  more  brutal  and  bestial 
ones,  but  such  as  spring  from  mere  con- 
siderations of  personal  preference  or  interest. 
He  who  thus  lives  is  born  of  the  flesh,  and 
lives  on  the  carnal  plane.  The  best  part  in 
him  remains  stifled.  Man  is  only  then  man 
when  he  is  ruled  by  God,  when  his  life  is 
rooted  in  glad  and  habitual  fellowship  with 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  69 

the  author  and  the  archetype  of  his  being, 
when  he  is  born  from  above,  moved  by 
celestial  impulses  and  inspirations.  Using 
the  word  in  this  scriptural  sense,  regenera- 
tion is  the  prime  and  universal  necessity. 
Only  as  a  man  is  born  from  above  can  he  be 
a  citizen  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  self- 
directed  man  is  the  man  without  a  crown, 
the  man  in  moral  collapse.  His  character 
is  fatally  deficient ;  his  righteousness,  as  the 
old  divines  were  wont  to  say,  is  only  filthy 
rags.  We  may  not  take  kindly  to  their 
phrase,  imputed  righteousness ;  but  the  thing 
meant,  the  entrance  of  Christ  into  the  heart 
by  faith  as  the  power  of  a  new  creation,  in 
which  his  life  subdues  and  molds  our  own, 
cannot  be  held  too  tenaciously.  Therein 
lies  the  world's  salvation,  the  conversion  of 
the  individual  to  Jesus  Christ,  the  domi- 
nance in  each  hum_an  unit  of  the  law  of  the 
Spirit  of  his  life. 

For  to  be  under  the  law  of  Christ  is 
man's  emancipation.  It  is  his  conscious 
adoption  and  his  supernal  glory.  Many 
of    Paul's    statements    about    law    and    its 


70  The  World  for  Christ. 

relation  to  the  grace  of  Christ  have  been 
seriously  misunderstood,  as  if  law  in  the 
sense  of  voluntary,  glad,  and  habitual  sub- 
mission to  authority  vv^ere  alien  to  the  Gospel. 
The  hammer  of  his  indignant  protest  smote 
the  Pharisaic  interpretations  of  law.  Its 
authority,  as  they  expounded  it,  he  re- 
pudiated. But  he  calls  himself  the  slave  of 
Jesus  Christ.  The  Gospel  is  a  proclama- 
tion of  redemption  under  the  law  of  Christ. 
Faith  is  trust  and  surrender,  issuing  in 
obedience ;  in  which  surrender  and  obedi- 
ence man  secures  his  plenary  and  eternal 
spiritual  emancipation.  That  secures  to 
him  deliverance  from  the  guilt,  the  pollu- 
tion, the  power,  and  the  consequences  of  sin. 
Set  right  with  God,  through  the  knowledge 
of  him  in  Jesus  Christ,  he  is  for  the  first 
time  set  free,  and  his  powers  begin  to  work 
in  their  divinely  appointed  way.  The  new 
birth,  under  the  law  of  Christ,  makes  all 
things  new.  It  is  a  veritable  resurrection  in 
the  depths  of  his  being,  carrying  in  it  the 
energy  of  a  world-wide  transfiguration. 
It  is  the  present  and  continuous  salvation  of 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  71 

the  individual — his  present  and  continuous 
life  under  the  law  of  Christ — which  is  to  be 
secured.  That  is  the  only  proper  objective 
aim  of  Christian  missions.  Conversion  in 
time  is  not  a  means  to  salvation  in  eternity. 
Repentance  and  faith  are  not  means  to 
some  future  blessedness.  Whatever  efficacy 
the  Gospel  has,  it  is  intended  to  make  man- 
ifest on  earth  as  well  as  in  heaven.  The 
will  of  God  is  to  be  done  here  in  the  mortal 
life  of  men.  The  men  and  women  who 
were  added  to  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  are 
spoken  of  in  Acts  as  those  who  were  being 
saved ;  the  present,  not  the  future,  partici- 
ple. Their  salvation  was  real.  It  was 
present  as  well  as  prospective.  Its  subjects 
had  laid  hold  upon  the  powers  of  the  world 
to  come,  and  so  their  terrestrial  life  became 
celestial  in  quality  and  eternal  in  endur- 
ance. 

I  would  not  lay  less  stress  upon  the 
future  blessings  involved  in  Christian  dis- 
cipleship,  but  I  would  lay  more  upon  its 
present  advantages  and  obligations.  We 
degrade  the  Gospel  when  we  urge   men  to 


72  The  World  for  Christ. 

its  acceptance  because  we  would  have  them 
go  to  heaven  when  they  die.  A  good  many 
of  our  hymns  and  a  good  many  of  our  ser- 
mons are  keyed  to  that  note.  It  crops  out 
in  our  philosophy  of  revivals,  and  the  lurid 
appeals  which  characterize  them.  Paley 
embodied  the  notion  in  his  theory  of  moral 
obligation  as  obedience  to  the  authority  of 
God,  under  the  motive  of  future  reward  or 
punishment,  utility  being  frankly  declared 
to  be  the  source  and  the  sanction  of  duty. 
Now,  fear  is  a  legitimate  motive ;  but  it  is 
lowest  in  rank.  Duty  is  a  higher  incentive, 
as  voicing  the  authority  of  the  reason ;  and 
love  is  higher  still,  as  securing  the  highest 
good  in  the  present  and  personal  approval 
of  God.  The  commendation  of  God  is  the 
common  term  covering  the  highest  good  of 
the  present  and  of  the  future.  Without 
Christ,  as  John  Newton  sings,  a  palace  is  a 
toy;  with  him  the  prison  is  a  palace.  I 
had  a  parishioner  some  years  ago  who  used 
to  thank  the  Lord  that  we  were  not  only 
bound  for  heaven, but  that  we  had  a  heaven 
to  go  to  heaven  in.     He  had  learned  that 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  73 

phrase  from  Methodist  lips,  and  its  music 
was  very  sweet  to  me.  The  life  of  every 
disciple  is  to  be  a  heavenly  life. 

If  this  be  the  immediate  design  of  per- 
sonal conversion,  it  cannot  be  that  the 
vocation  of  the  Christian  Church,  in  mis- 
sionary endeavor  is  that  of  a  rescue  com- 
pany, saving  as  many  souls  as  possible 
from  a  wrecked  humanity  which  the  ocean 
of  eternal  perdition  is  rapidly  engulfing. 
It  is  this  notion  which  leads  to  the  state- 
ment, that  without  the  Gospel  men  are 
forever  damned;  and  then  we  immedi- 
ately proceed  to  make  an  exception  of 
infants  and  idiots  and  all  others  who  walk 
according  to  the  light  of  nature.  The  ex- 
ceptions riddle  the  theory  that  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel  is  designed  primarily  to 
save  men  from  hell,  and  get  them  into 
heaven.  We  are  to  preach  the  Gospel  for 
the  immediate  salvation  of  its  hearers,  for 
the  present  redemption  of  the  world  in 
which  we  live.  I  am  not  now  speaking  of 
the  scope  of  Christ's  mediatorial  activity. 
That  includes  the  universe  and  the  eterni- 


74  The  World  for  Christ. 

ties.  But  we  have  no  mission  to  the  angels, 
nor  to  the  spirits  in  prison,  whoever  these 
may  be.  Our  work  is  limited  to  this  globe, 
and  to  the  earthly  life  of  its  inhabitants. 
If  we  cannot  get  hell  out  of  men,  we  have 
no  reason  to  believe  that  we  can  keep  them 
out  of  hell.  If  we  cannot  get  heaven  into 
men,  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  we 
can  get  men  into  heaven.  And,  therefore, 
to  make  men  heavenly-minded,  here  and 
now,  is  the  one  thing  upon  which  our  hearts 
should  be  set.  I  am  not  a  Universalist  in 
theology ;  I  dare  not,  as  under  the  author- 
ity of  Jesus  Christ,  deny  or  doubt  the  eter- 
nity of  reward  and  punishment ;  but  I  am 
just  as  clear  in  my  conviction  that  the  eter- 
nal destinies  of  souls  are  not  the  things 
with  which  I  am  immediately  to  concern 
myself ;  I  am  summoned  to  preach  the  Gos- 
pel of  Jesus  Christ,  that  men  now  living  in 
sin  may  begin  and  continue  to  live  in  right- 
eousness. That  is  salvation.  That  alone  is. 
There  are  some  who  tell  us  that  the  Gos- 
pel is  to  be  preached  to  all  nations  simply 
as  a  testimony  unto  them,  and  that  when 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  75 

this  is  done  the  end  will  come.  We  are 
urged,  in  consequence,  to  multiply  our  mis- 
sionary forces,  instantly,  a  hundred  or  a 
thousandfold,  if  need  be,  so  that  there  may 
be  a  speedy  verbal  compliance  with  this  com- 
mand, without  much  concern  as  to  the  re- 
sults of  sucli  a  campaign.  There  is  a  the- 
ology of  missions  which  fixes  its  thought, 
not  upon  the  world's  conversion  to  Christ, 
but  upon  Christ's  second  and  final  advent. 
To  hasten  the  day  of  his  appearing  is  made 
the  great  incentive.  There  are  others  who 
tell  us  that  the  gathering  of  the  elect  is  the 
task  which,  under  God's  secret  direction, 
the  Church  is  set  to  accomplish.  Every 
one  of  these  theories  projects  the  goal  into 
the  future.  But  even  in  the  Apocalypse 
men  are  not  snatched  from  earth  into  the 
New  Jerusalem ;  the  City  of  God  descends, 
and  his  tabernacle  is  among  men.  It  is  a 
present  and  earthly  triumph  which  the  in- 
spired seer  traces.  Our  task  lies  close  at 
hand;  it  is  the  historical  triumph  of  the 
Gospel  in  all  lands  through  the  voluntary 
allegiance    of    individual    souls    to    Jesus 


76  The  World  for  Christ. 

Christ,  who  by  the  power  of  his  grace  are 
to  be  renewed  in  the  spirit  of  their  minds 
and  established  in  righteousness.  True, 
this  is  only  preliminary,  the  preface  or  in- 
troductory chapter  to  an  eternal  volume  of 
history,  the  plan  of  which  has  not  been 
disclosed  to  us,  but  in  which  Jesus  Christ 
retains  his  royal  ascendency.  The  Lamb 
slain  from  the  foundation  is  also  the  Lord 
of  the  eternities.  The  song  of  Moses  and 
of  the  Lamb  is  an  unending  psalm  of  praise. 
The  cross  of  Christ  is  the  flashing  ruby  set 
in  the  heart  of  the  eternal  sovereignties. 
All  this  is  true,  but  with  it  we  are  no  more 
immediately  concerned  than  we  are  with 
the  cosmic  preparations  for  the  appearance 
of  man  upon  the  globe.  The  post-historic 
period  is  as  much  a  sealed  volume  to  us  as 
is  the  prehistoric  age.  Terrestrial  history 
bounds  the  task  which  is  set  us  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  kingdom  of  God.  In 
miniature,  and  among  mortal  men,  the 
earth  is  to  be  made  what  the  immortal 
heavens  are ;  and  this  is  to  be  secured  by 
the  simple  method  of  personal  discipleship 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  77 

to  Jesus  Christ.  If,  as  President  Wayland 
argued,  the  dignity  of  an  enterprise  must 
be  measured  by  the  vastness  of  the  under- 
taking, the  arduousness  of  its  execution,  and 
the  simplicity  of  the  means  to  be  used,  the 
evangelization  of  the  world  is  the  sublimest 
which  can  possibly  enlist  the  energy  of 
man.  None  is  more  daring,  none  is  more 
difficult,  and  none  relies  upon  simpler  meth- 
ods— the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  securing 
personal  repentance  and  faith. 

But  that  lodges  the  assimilating  and 
transfiguring  leaven.  It  revolutionizes  per- 
sonal character,  making  it  divine  in  type 
and  Christlike  in  expression.  It  lays  the 
foundations  of  a  reconstructed  society  in  the 
Christian  home,  where  the  children  are 
trained  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of 
the  Lord.  Christian  teachers  carry  its 
molding  power  into  the  schoolrooms,  even 
where  the  Bible  is  not  read  and  prayers  are 
not  offered.  Next,  a  literature  crystallizes 
the  Christian  convictions  and  ideals,  giving 
to  them  the  forms  of  noblest  eloquence  and 
of    loftiest    song.     The    nursery    and    the 


78  The  World  for  Christ. 

death  chamber  echo  the  celestial  music. 
Art  and  architecture  become  the  allies  of 
the  Gospel.  Genius  catches  the  fire  of 
Christian  devotion ;  and  brush,  chisel,  and 
trowel  join  the  growing  confederacy  of  re- 
o-eneratinof  forces.  Manners  soften  and 
take  on  a  finer  fiber.  Recreations  and  pas- 
times lose  their  coarseness.  The  brutalities 
retreat  and  vanish.  Caste  loses  its  rigidity. 
Social  barricades  surrender  to  the  wider 
fellowship  of  humanity.  The  fraternity  of 
man  gets  itself  recognized  in  public  opinion. 
A  merciless  industrialism,  which  coins  the 
blood  of  the  poor  and  fattens  upon  a 
dwarfed  and  debased  childhood,  is  repu- 
diated by  Christian  employers,  who  become 
leaders  in  securing  the  rights  of  the  op- 
pressed and  helpless.  Slavery  vanishes  be- 
fore the  storm  of  moral  indignation  which 
the  religious  view  of  man  has  generated. 
An  outraged  citizenship  lays  bare  the  foun- 
tains of  municipal  and  national  corruption, 
pursues  the  leaders  to  their  hiding  places, 
remands  them  to  oblivion,  and  brands  them 
with  infamy.     The  king  ceases  to  be  the 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  79 

State  and  becomes  himself  only  its  most 
illustrious  subject,  honored  as  the  represent- 
ative and  executive  of  natural  justice. 
The  passion  for  wars  of  revenge  and  con- 
quest subsides,  and  is  rebuked  with  unmis- 
takable sternness.  Judicial  tribunals  of 
arbitration  supplant  the  appeals  to  shot  and 
shell. 

There  is  nothing  imaginary  in  this  pic- 
ture. We  have  seen  it  growing  under 
our  own  eyes.  A  handful  of  despised 
men,  under  the  leadership  of  a  crucified 
Galilean  mechanic,  has  marched  steadily 
to  the  leadership  of  the  world  without  re- 
course to  the  sword.  The  dungeon,  the 
fagot,  and  the  stake,  which  witnessed  their 
heroic  endurance,  have  been  mightier  than 
the  engines  of  war.  The  blood  of  the  mar- 
tyrs has  been  the  seed  of  the  Church.  And 
the  regenerating  energy  which  the  Christian 
Church  has  supplied  has  been  conveyed  in 
the  personal  message  of  the  Gospel  to  each 
soul,  a  message  proclaiming  the  infinite 
grace  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  infinite 
worth  of  man  even  in  his  deepest  degrada- 


80  The  World  for  Christ. 

tion.  Faith  in  the  incarnate  Word  of  God, 
dying  for  the  salvation  of  sinners,  triumph- 
ing over  death,  and  inaugurating  his  celestial 
reign  in  his  ascension,  made  it  impossible 
for  any  man  to  despair  of  himself  or  to  be- 
come an  object  of  contempt  to  others. 

The  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  should  not 
be  unheeded.  The  growing  secularization  of 
Christianity  after  the  accession  of  Constan- 
tine  was  attended  by  the  most  baleful  con- 
sequences. The  Church  became  a  political 
institution.  It  assumed  control  of  the  uni- 
versities and  the  palaces,  degrading  learn- 
ing, debauching  princes,  and  making  mer- 
chandise of  its  own  dignity.  It  may  all 
have  been  inevitable ;  it  may  have  been  a 
blessing  in  disguise ;  but  it  certainly  was 
not  an  unqualified  good,  and  the  world's 
repudiation  of  such  a  tutelage  has  received 
the  approval  of  history.  Protestantism  has 
not  been  altogether  blameless.  It,  too,  has 
dabbled  in  politics,  and  has  been  ambitious 
of  secular  leadership.  It  cannot  have  es- 
caped an  attentive  observer  of  American  life 
that  we  have  not  escaped  the  danger  of  sec- 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  81 

ularizing  the  Gospel.  In  spite  of  our  con- 
stitutional theory  that  Church  and  State 
have  their  separate  and  distinct  functions, 
there  are  many  among  us  who  advocate  the 
formal  cooperation  of  the  Churches  in  secur- 
ing political  and  industrial  reforms.  They 
insist  that  the  Church  has  not  only  an  indi- 
vidual, but  also  a  social,  mission.  The 
Churches,  they  tell  us,  should  have  been 
antislavery  combinations.  They  should 
now  be  temperance  societies  and  clubs  for 
municipal  reform,  and  antimilitary  conven- 
ticles. My  reply  to  that  contention  is  that 
all  this  is  foreign  to  the  New  Testament 
charter  and  constitution,  and  that  the  policy 
has  been  tried  on  a  large  scale  and  proved 
to  be  disastrous.  It  has  been  weighed  in 
the  balances  and  found  wanting.  The 
Church  has  a  definite  vocation,  to  lodge  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  life  of  commu- 
nities and  nations  by  securing  personal  ac- 
ceptance of  it.  All  else  must  be  left  to  the 
free  friction  of  intelligent  discussion  and 
decision.  For  the  Christian  disciple  is  a 
free  man,  whose  right  of  private  judgment 


82  The  World  for  Christ. 

may  not  be  abridged.  Sumptuary  legisla- 
tion, economic  regulations,  political  instruc- 
tions imposed  by  ecclesiastical  authority, 
are  usurpations  of  power  to  be  resisted  for 
the  Church's  own  sake,  and  because  such 
action  involves  a  tutelage  unworthy  of 
Christian  freemen.  These  are  matters  in 
which  the  individual  Christian  disciple 
must  be  trusted,  and  urged  to  follow  his 
own  conscientious  convictions.  The  Church, 
as  a  Church  associated  under  the  call  of 
Jesus  Christ,  must  give  itself  wholly  to  so 
preaching  the  Gospel  as  to  secure  its  per- 
sonal acceptance.  To  bring  men  and 
women  to  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  keep  them 
under  the  law  of  his  life,  is  our  sole  and 
supreme  duty ;  and  Christianized  men  and 
women  may  be  trusted  to  work  out  the 
Christian  civilization  of  the  future. 

I  have  insisted  that  the  salvation  which 
the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  contemplates  is 
a  present  and  continuous  salvation.  It  is 
designed  to  revolutionize  and  transfigure 
the  mortal  life  of  men.  It  fails  when  it 
does  not  do  that.     It  succeeds  when  it  does 


The  Result  to  be  Achieved.  83 

that,  however  limited  the  circle  of  its  im- 
mediate influence  may  be.  The  dynamic 
energy  so  lodged  in  souls  has  expansive 
power,  and  needs  only  time  to  transform 
society.  It  may  be  said  that  in  thus  limit- 
ing the  sphere  of  the  Church  I  have  de- 
graded her  to  a  mere  civilizing  agency.  I 
have  utterly  failed  to  make  myself  under- 
stood if  any  extended  reply  is  needed.  Civ- 
ilization must  come  by  Christianization, 
and  Christianization  must  come  through 
personal  repentance  and  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ.  To  secure,  by  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel,  the  heavenly  birth  in  the  individual 
soul,  is  the  task  of  Christian  missions — the 
one  result  to  be  achieved — issuing  ulti- 
mately in  the  conquest  of  all  the  dynamic 
forces  by  which  human  history  is  shaped. 
And  such  a  shaping  of  earthly  history  must, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  an  eternal  his- 
tory, shaping  the  eternal  destinies  of  all 
who  are  brought  within  its  sweep,  and  es- 
tablishing the  kingdom  which  cannot  be 
shaken  and  which  endures  forever.  But 
these  eternal  issues  should  not  blind  us  to 


84  The  World  for  Christ. 

the  fact  that  our  immediate  sphere  of  serv- 
ice is  bounded  by  the  mortal  life  of  men,  and 
that  the  historical  triumph  of  Christianity- 
is  to  be  achieved  by  so  preaching  the  Gos- 
pel as  to  secure  its  personal  acceptance  in 
repentance  and  faith. 


^be  1Re6i6tance  to  be  ®v>ercome 


IV. 
The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome^ 

IN  one  of  his  discourses  to  the  multitude, 
who  were  in  eager  haste  to  range  them- 
selves under  his  leadership,  our  Lord  re- 
minded them  that  the  terms  of  personal 
discipleship  were  unusually  exacting-.  The 
daily  cross  was  its  badge.  Men  must  be 
prepared  to  sunder  every  tie  of  blood  and 
to  hate  their  own  life.  Ostracism,  shame, 
imprisonment,  exile,  martyrdom,  must  have 
no  terrors  for  them,  and  must  be  discounted 
in  advance.  They  must  be  faced  and  en- 
dured without  surprise.  And  then,  as  if 
touched  by  their  painful  attention,  and  to 
remove  any  suspicion  that  he  was  disposed 
rudely  to  repel  them,  he  reminded  them 
that  no  man  would  be  so  foolish  as  to 
build  a  tower  without  carefully  calculating 
its  cost,  nor  so  rash  as  to  throw  down  the 
gauge  of  battle  without  weighing  the  prob- 
abilities of  success  and  defeat.  They  were 
exhorted  to  act  intelligently  and  deliber- 


88  The  World  for  Christ. 

ately,  to  prevent  any  possible  relapse  which 
unforeseen  and  unwelcome  hardship  might 
precipitate.  They  must  be  ready  for  the 
worst  if  their  faith  was  to  be  victorious. 
He  himself  had  done  that  when  he  came  to 
do  the  will  of  his  Father,  and,  therefore, 
the  world  could  not  crush  the  buoyancy  of 
his  spirit.  Singing  a  hymn  with  his  bewil- 
dered followers,  he  went  forth  to  endure  the 
agony,  the  scourging,  and  the  crucifixion. 
Paul  walked  in  hi$  Master's  steps.  The 
loss  of  all  things  was  something  for  which 
he  was  prepared,  and  therefore  he  gloried 
in  tribulation  and  rejoiced  in  his  infirmities, 
which  were  the  perpetual  legacy  of  his  suf- 
ferings. The  knout,  the  dungeon,  and  the 
ax  had  been  discounted  in  advance,  so  that 
he  regards  his  blood  as  only  the  fitting  li- 
bation with  which  his  apostolic  ministry  is 
consecrated  and  crowned  upon  the  altar  of 
devotion. 

This  is  the  condition  of  all  effective  work. 
Enthusiasm  must  be  intelligent,  comprehen- 
sive, and  farsighted  in  its  outlook.  Courage 
and  recklessness  are  not  synonymous.     The 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        89 

brave  man  does  not  throw  his  life  away,  nor 
does  he  meet  his  foe  without  proper  equip- 
ment. It  may  be  that  he  has  only  a  sling  and 
a  few  smooth  pebbles,  but  he  will  select  these 
with  the  greatest  care,  and  use  them  with  the 
utmost  dexterity ;  nor  will  he  underrate  the 
fury  of  the  antagonist  whom  he  has  chal- 
lenged to  combat.  The  conversion  of  the 
world  by  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  is  a 
herculean  task.  We  must  not  minimize  the 
difficulties.  We  must  count  the  cost.  We 
must  be  prepared  for  many  checks  and  re- 
verses, just  as  in  every  hotly  contested  war 
the  pendulum  of  battle  swings  between  ad- 
vance and  retreat,  between  victory  and  de- 
feat. There  is  an  enthusiasm  which  suc- 
cumbs at  the  first  touch  of  disaster.  It  is 
lacking  in  intelligent  prevision.  If  our  zeal 
is  to  be  unquenchable  it  must  be  supported 
by  knowledge.  If,  therefore,  I  ask  you  to 
consider  the  Resistance  which  must  be  over- 
come in  securing  the  historical  triumph  of 
Christianity,  I  am  only  following  the  urgent 
command  of  Christ  himself  and  complying 
with  the  dictate  of  sober  sense.     Only  in 


90  The  World  for  Christ. 

this  way  can  we  banish  timidity;  only  in 
this  way  can  we  have  a  courage  which  is 
undaunted  and  tenacious.  Such  a  review 
will  serve  a  double  purpose.  It  will  pre- 
vent discouragement  and  the  disposition  to 
retire  from  the  field,  and  it  will  provoke  us 
to  be  wise  in  the  plan  and  the  conduct  of 
the  great  campaign. 

We  may  as  well  recognize  the  sad  and 
stubborn  fact  that  in  preaching  the  Gospel 
we  encounter  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  nat- 
ural heart.  This  is  not  the  place  for  enter- 
ing upon  a  consideration  of  what  is  known 
in  theology  as  original  sin,  or  inherited  de- 
pravity. It  is  an  intricate  and  difficult 
theme,  which  after  fifteen  hundred  years  of 
debate  remains  as  great  a  riddle  as  ever. 
It  is  difficult  to  see  how  sin  can  in  any 
proper  sense  be  transmitted  from  father  to 
son,  carrying  with  it  inherited  guilt;  and  it 
is  equally  difficult  to  explain  the  universality 
of  sin  without  some  such  theory.  Augus- 
tine does  not  convince  me,  and  Pelagius 
does  not  satisfy  me.  The  realism  of  the 
first  is  unintelligible  to  me,  the  sharp  indi- 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        91 

vidualism  of  the  other  is  superficial.  Per- 
sonality is  not  so  distinct  and  independent 
as  to  reduce  moral  solidarity  to  a  name  ;  nor 
is  the  moral  unity  of  the  race  such  as  to 
make  personality  an  illusion.  To  my  read- 
ing, at  least,  Paul  does  not  advance  a  phil- 
osophical solution.  His  popular  phraseol- 
ogy and  analogical  references  are  unduly 
strained  when  they  are  made  to  yield  a  uni- 
versal metaphysics,  as  appears  plainly  from 
the  fact  that  theologians  are  still  unable  to 
agree  in  their  interpretation  of  the  fifth 
chapter  of  Romans.  Such  being  the  state 
of  the  controversy,  I  have  been  disposed  to 
read  Paul  as  making  a  plain  historical  state- 
ment, and  instituting  a  plain  historical  com- 
parison between  Adam  and  Christ,  without 
reference  to  theories  of  transfer  or  imputa- 
tions. The  simple  facts  are  that  Adam 
sinned,  and  that  all  who  have  descended 
from  him  are  sinners ;  and  these  are  facts 
which  must  be  universally  conceded  upon 
any  theory  and  upon  no  theory.  The  car- 
nal mind  is  enmity  against  God.  It  arrays 
itself  in    deliberate   hostility  against   him. 


92  The  World  for  Christ. 

The  message  of  forgiveness  and  redemp- 
tion, while  it  is  good  news,  is  nevertheless 
an  unwelcome  one,  because  it  is  associated 
with  conditions  which  provoke  resistance 
and  resentment.  The  angels  proclaim  it 
with  song ;  the  earth  answers  it  with  curses. 
Its  advent  hastens  the  tragedy  of  history, 
and  the  crucifixion  is  the  world's  reply  to 
Heaven's  mercy. 

It  is  strange ;  it  is  sad ;  but  it  is  true. 
The  mystery  of  the  atonement  is  no  greater 
than  the  mystery  of  that  crime  which  nailed 
our  Lord  to  the  cross.  And  the  mystery  of 
that  enmity  is  perpetually  repeated.  The 
Christian  is  amazed  that  there  ever  should 
have  been  a  time  v/hen  he  was  indifferent 
or  hostile  to  the  Gospel.  In  the  fresh  en- 
thusiasm of  our  conversion,  or  in  the  early 
ardor  of  ministerial  service,  we  imagine  that 
souls  must  and  will  instantly  yield  as  soon  as 
we  can  make  them  understand  our  message. 
Our  illusions  speedily  vanish.  Men  listen 
with  indifference,  with  incredulity,  with 
amusement,  and  when  we  crowd  them  closely 
they  answer  us  with  ill-concealed  contempt 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        93 

or  hostility.  It  may  be  our  fault,  for  we  are 
not  always  wise ;  but  it  is  not  wholly  our 
fault,  and  we  retire  amazed  and  perplexed. 
The  brute  will  not  refuse  the  grain  you 
give  it,  but  man  spurns  the  bread  of  life. 
We  glory  in  revivals,  but  revivals  are  them- 
selves the  most  startling  and  significant 
evidences  of  the  violent  hostility  of  the  nat- 
ural heart.  It  should  not  be  hard  to  lead 
men  to  Christ.  It  is  hard,  and  the  difficulty 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  persistence  with 
which  many  refuse  to  yield.  Men  are 
blind,  and  men  are  obstinate ;  they  do  not 
know  what  is  best  for  them,  and  when  they 
know  what  is  best  they  continue,  as  Ovid 
long  ago  said,  to  follow  the  worse,  **  Video 
meliora  proboque,  deteriora  sequor."  This 
does  not  argue  the  hopelessness  of  moral 
recovery,  but  it  does  set  in  strong  and  star- 
tling relief  the  difficulty  of  that  moral  recov- 
ery which  it  is  the  design  of  the  Gospel  to 
secure. 

The  hostility  of  the  natural  heart  is  the 
most  universal  and  radical  form  of  the  re- 
sistance which  the  Gospel  encounters.     It 
1 


94  The  World  for  Christ. 

is  as  bitter  at  home  as  it  is  abroad.  The 
preservation  and  aggressive  progress  of 
Christianity,  even  among  ourselves,  involve 
us  in  a  perpetual  struggle.  When  we 
thrust  the  slender  columns  of  our  picket 
forces  into  the  lands  of  heathenism,  we  dis- 
cover that  we  are  threatened  in  the  rear  as 
well  as  in  front.  The  missionary  has  often 
been  the  pioneer.  His  passion  for  souls 
has  carried  him  across  the  seas,  and  into  the 
heart  of  unknown  continents,  peopled  with 
cruel  and  savage  tribes.  Even  Columbus 
was  moved  by  religious  zeal,  and  Living- 
stone made  an  end  to  the  Dark  Continent. 
But  the  path  blazed  by  the  herald  of  the 
Gospel  has  speedily  become  the  highway 
of  adventure.  The  savage  is  ignorant  as 
well  as  immoral,  and  he  is  easily  duped. 
He  knows  little  of  the  value  of  his  products 
and  possessions,  and  is  ready  to  exchange 
them  for  cheap  and  tawdry  trifles.  His 
animalism  makes  him  the  easy  victim  of 
temptation,  and  the  white  man's  **  fire 
water  "  finds  a  readier  welcome  than  his 
books.      The  slave  trade  has  finally  been 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        95 

outlawed  by  the  consent  of  all  civilized  na- 
tions, but  the  rum  traffic  has  thus  far  suc- 
ceeded in  defying  the  moral  sentiment  of 
the  world. 

It  is  needless  to  enter  into  specific  details. 
It  is  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  the 
pioneers  and  agents  of  commerce  have 
crowded  hard  upon  the  preachers  of  the  Gos- 
pel, and  the  work  of  debauchery  has  fol- 
lowed the  messengers  of  righteousness.  The 
ships  have  emptied  their  cursing  and  drunk- 
en sailors  into  the  ports,  and  good  men  have 
looked  on  in  helpless  agony  and  alarm.  It 
would  seem  as  if  good  were  being  done  that 
evil  might  come ;  and  there  are  not  a  few  who 
regard  the  evangelization,  for  example,  of 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  as  a  most  stupendous 
blunder,  making  its  natives  the  easy  prey 
of  the  vices  of  civilization.  Would  it  not 
have  been  better  to  leave  them  in  their  pa- 
gan darkness  until  we  ourselves  had  become 
a  little  more  Christianized?  There  are 
tribes  and  races  w^hich,  with  the  preaching 
of  the  Gospel  among  them,  seem  to  enter 
upon  the  period  of  their  extirpation.     There 


96  The  World  for  Christ. 

is  not  sufficient  vitality  in  them  to  survive 
the  moral  test  to  which  they  are  subjected. 
Whether  that  extirpation  could  have  been 
avoided  in  any  case,  whether  they  would 
not  have  ultimately  dwindled  away,  so  that 
their  extirpation  and  supplanting  have  only 
been  hastened  by  making  an  end  of  their 
isolation,  is  a  question  too  large  to  be  en- 
tered upon  here,  though  I  am  disposed  to 
regard  the  latter  suggestion  as  the  true  one. 
The  fact  remains  that  the  Gospel  not  only 
provokes  the  hostility  which  is  natural  to 
every  human  heart,  but  its  advance  is  chal- 
lenged and  checked  by  all  the  selfish  and 
wicked  passions  which  run  riot  under  cover 
of  civilized  and  nominally  Christian  nations. 
Hardly  less  embarrassing  is  the  fact  that 
the  literature  which  caricatures  and  discred- 
its Christianity  follows  the  Gospel  into  ev- 
ery new  field.  Its  assumptions  and  logic 
and  conclusions  may  be  repudiated  at  home, 
■but  in  the  new  lands  they  have  all  the  at- 
traction of  novelty  and  find  welcome  audi- 
ence. The  spirit  of  controversy  is  aroused, 
and  Christianity  is  charged  with  inherent 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        97 

and  hopeless  weakness  because  of  the  wide 
rejection  of  its  claims  in  the  lands  where  it 
is  the  only  religion.  India  and  Japan  are 
passing  now  through  this  stage  of  polemics, 
which  is  causing  deep  anxiety  among  us, 
but  which  was  inevitable  and  which  must 
be  fought  out  to  the  end,  even  as  our  own 
Christianity  has  emerged  from  the  slough 
of  Gnosticism  and  of  Neoplatonism.  The 
situation  calls  for  wisdom  and  patience ;  it 
is  not  ground  for  discouragement.  The  re- 
sistance was  and  is  inevitable. 

A  third  form  of  resistance  which  the  Gos- 
pel encounters  is  the  coarse  animalism  of 
idolatrous  tribes  and  races.  The  progress 
of  civilization  has  eliminated  the  idolatry 
of  polytheism  from  all  races  which  lay  claim 
to  any  literature.  It  survives  only  in  tribes 
of  low  intelligence  and  dwelling  in  isola- 
tion; and  there  it  is  associated  with  the 
most  revolting  habits.  It  has  often  been 
noticed,  as  evidence  of  the  regenerating 
energy  of  Christianity,  that  among  such 
peoples  the  Gospel  has  found  ready  entrance 
and  wrought  most  signal  changes.    And  yet 


98  The  World  for  Christ. 

it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Christianity 
began  with  the  picked  races  of  the  world, 
the  elect  trinity  of  history,  and  that  the 
picked  races  are  to-day  the  strongholds  of 
the  Christian  faith.  The  rescue  of  savage 
tribes  is  part  of  the  mission  of  Christianity. 
Savagery  must  come  to  an  end,  but  it  may 
come  to  an  end  by  the  disappearance,  in 
process  of  time,  of  the  tribes  which  practice 
it.  There  are  not  wanting  signs  that  the 
process  of  elevation  is  qualified  by  one  of 
elimination.  It  may  be  that  some  tribes 
are  so  brutalized  and  so  destitute  of  moral 
energy  that  they  may  be  regarded  as  inca- 
pable of  being  preserved,  and  that  they 
must  ultimately  disappear  or  be  absorbed. 
It  is  among  such  races  that  the  most  violent 
reactions  have  occurred  again  and  again, 
as  in  Madagascar  and  the  islands  of  the 
Pacific,  filling  the  Christian  heart  with  dis- 
may. It  is  a  form  of  resistance  which 
makes  Christian  institutions  uncertain  of 
tenure,  but  one  which  we  should  face  cour- 
ageously, never  slackening  our  earnest  en- 
deavor even  in  the  face  of  tribal  disintegra- 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.        99 

tion  and  disappearance.  For  this,  too,  sad 
as  it  may  seem  to  be,  is  a  part  of  that  re- 
generation which  the  Gospel  contemplates. 
It  is  a  higher  form  of  resistance,  and  one 
much  less  easily  overcome,  which  confronts 
us  in  such  lands  as  those  of  Japan,  China, 
and  India.  These  peoples  are  hardly  poly- 
theistic and  idolatrous  in  the  proper  sense. 
Their  formal  polytheism  is  pervaded  by  the 
metaphysics  of  pantheism,  as  in  India, 
where  all  things  are  regarded  as  embodying 
the  divine ;  or  by  the  philosophy  of  agnos- 
ticism, as  in  the  teachings  of  Confucius, 
who,  very  much  in  the  temper  of  Mill  and 
Spencer,  does  not  trouble  himself  greatly 
about  either  God  or  the  future  life.  The 
religion  of  Confucius  is  ethical  and  practi- 
cal ;  it  deals  with  the  prosaic  present  and 
with  earthly  relations,  while  it  lacks  the  en- 
ergy to  make  its  rules  effective.  The  reli- 
gion of  Buddha  is  mystical  and  transcen- 
dental ;  it  revels  in  ecstasy  and  absorption, 
and  in  its  pantheism  ethical  distinctions 
vanish.  In  both  religions  the  personality 
of  God  has  practically  disappeared. 


100  The  World  for  Christ. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  the  basal  lack 
of  the  Asiatic  peoples  is  the  sense  of  sin. 
That  is  true.  But  the  sense  of  sin  is  pro- 
voked only  by  the  recognition  of  the  holy 
personality  of  God ;  and  a  recent  traveler 
records  his  conviction  that  a  grasp  upon  God 
as  personal  and  holy  is  the  greatest  need  of 
Japan  and  China.  Paul  is  right,  *'  By  the 
law  is  the  knowledge  of  sm^''  and  the  sense 
of  law  will  be  shadowy  and  shallow  unless  it 
is  recognized  as  embodying  the  imperative 
of  personal  holy  authority.  The  question 
of  God  as  personal  and  holy  will  be  the  su- 
preme question  for  Asia,  challenged  by  the 
agnosticism  of  China  and  by  the  pantheism 
of  India ;  just  as  it  was  the  supreme  ques- 
tion between  Christianity  and  Greek  phi- 
losophy with  its  oriental  admixtures.  It  is 
the  great  question  for  every  day  and  na- 
tion, and  in  its  right  settlement  the  fact  of 
the  Incarnation  assumes  its  determining 
place  in  religious  thought.  An  intellectual 
revolution,  deep  and  widespread,  is  immi- 
nent in  the  lands  of  the  East.  These  peo- 
ples are  not  in   process  of    decay.     They 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.       101 

have  astonished  the  world  by  their  achieve- 
ments. Japan  has  bounded  out  of  its  ob- 
scurity. China  is  not  so  somnolent  as  it 
seems.  There  are  volcanic  forces  in  India. 
These  millions  will  not  always  remain  con- 
tent to  live  under  foreign  protectorates. 
The  first  pulses  of  a  new  patriotism  are  be- 
ginning to  beat  in  their  sluggish  blood. 
They  will  insist  upon  their  share  of  polit- 
ical independence,  and  their  place  in  the 
brotherhood  of  nations.  And  in  reliorion 
they  will  claim  the  same  independence. 
The  message  of  Paul,  the  Jew,  was  not  ac- 
cepted by  the  Roman  empire  until  its 
claims  had  been  subjected  to  the  severest 
examination.  The  Latin  Church  created 
its  own  theology;  the  Greek  Church  did 
the  same ;  and  in  every  nation  into  whose 
life  the  Gospel  has  entered  the  same  process 
has  taken  place.  The  theologies  have  dif- 
fered in  form,  and  their  independence  in 
formal  statement  has  made  the  essential 
agreement  only  more  marked.  The  God 
of  Europe  is  the  God  of  Asia.  The  Christ 
of  Europe  is  the  Christ  of  Asia ;  in  fact,  lie 


102  The  World  for  Christ. 

was  an  Asiatic  by  birth.  The  Bible  of  Eu- 
rope is  the  Bible  of  Asia ;  in  fact,  it  is  an 
Asiatic  product  for  the  most  part.  The 
valley  of  the  Euplirates  was  the  nursery  of 
monotheism,  of  the  doctrine  of  God  as  per- 
sonal and  holy ;  and  we  must  not  imagine 
that  our  formulas  will  be  accepted  without 
challenge.  The  old  battle  will  be  renewed 
on  Asiatic  soil,  and,  while  we  need  not 
doubt  the  issue,  it  is  wise  to  recognize  the 
resistance  which  the  Gospel  is  summoned 
to  overcome. 

That  resistance  is  such  as  to  sweep  even 
Christian  men  from  their  ancient  anchorage. 
They  have  gone  to  convert  the  heathen,  and 
have  surrendered  to  paganism.  I  had  a 
classmate  in  the  theological  seminary  who, 
thirty  years  ago,  went  as  a  missionary  to 
China.  He  abandoned  his  calling  and  his 
faith,  became  a  mandarin  of  the  ^'  third  but- 
ton," and  for  many  years  has  been  associated 
with  the  Chinese  legation  in  the  courts  of 
Europe.  He  writes  of  the  *  'iced  champagne" 
which  he  drinks  when  the  heat  of  summer 
is   oppressive,  and   talks  flippantly   of  the 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.       103 

**  so-called"  Holy  Land  and  of  the  "  historic 
cross  of  the  carpenter  philosopher,"  which 
annoys  him  at  every  step  as  he  travels  from 
Munich  to  St.  Petersburg.  He  has  devel- 
oped into  a  Confucianist.  Such  relapses 
are  not  surprising.  They  have  marked  the 
Christian  history  from  the  beginning- ;  but 
even  the  apostasy  of  the  Emperor  Julian 
did  not  stay  for  one  moment  the  Galilean's 
conquering  march.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  reversion  in  type,  a  return  after  domes- 
tication to  the  original  and  wild  state. 
There  is  a  dash  of  the  pagan  in  everyone  of 
us;  there  are  survivals  of  savagery  in  our 
highest  civilization;  and  not  one  of  us  is 
aware  what  tremendous  conserving  energies 
are  incarnate  and  active  in  the  intricate  en- 
vironment by  which  our  lives  are  shaped. 
And  a  similar  solidarity  of  thought  and 
conduct  confronts  us  when  we  attempt  to 
lodge  the  Gospel  in  the  life  of  Asia. 

In  counting  the  cost  we  must  take  account 
of  Mohammedanism.  It  is  not  insignificant, 
either  in  the  number  of  its  adherents,  or  in 
the  intensity  of  their  convictions,  or  in  the 


104  The  World  for  Christ. 

ardor  of  their  enthusiasm,  which  mounts 
into  religious  fanaticism.  They  believe 
themselves  to  be  the  elect  race.  Reverses 
do  not  subdue  them.  Conversions  to  Chris- 
tianity are  rare  among  them.  We  are 
*'  dogs  "  in  tbeir  estimate.  They  alone,  of 
all  races,  treat  us  with  supercilious  con- 
tempt. Their  thirteen  millions  dominate 
Asia  Minor.  Eighty  millions  or  more  are 
scattered  through  Asia,  of  whom  more  than 
half  are  in  India.  They  are  supreme  in 
Persia,  and  form  a  compact  body  in  China. 
A  hundred  millions  are  in  Africa,  dominat- 
ing its  greater  half,  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  the  center  of  the  continent. 
Islam  boasts  of  two  hundred  million  adhe- 
rents. Jerusalem  and  Constantinople  are 
in  their  hands.  The  Crusades  failed  to 
wrest  the  first  from  their  grasp,  and  for  the 
second  they  would  fight  with  equal  fierce- 
ness. The  unspeakable  Turk  has  been  Eu- 
rope's nightmare  for  more  than  six  hundred 
years.  Two  hundred  years  ago  his  cannon 
thundered  at  the  gates  of  Vienna.  The 
sultan  snaps  his  fingers  in  the  face  of  the 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.      105 

world.  The  Armenian  atrocities  have  sent 
a  thrill  of  horror  throughout  the  civilized 
world,  and  Christendom  seems  smitten  with 
paralysis. 

It  is  easy  to  denounce  England  for  its 
apathy,  but  one  half  of  Islam's  follow- 
ing is  in  lands  under  English  rule  and 
contiguous  to  it.  India  and  Egypt  have 
to  be  reckoned  with  in  dealing  with  the 
Turk ;  and  with  Russia  standing  at  bay, 
and  Germany  indifferent,  and  France  thirst- 
ing for  African  dominion,  England  is  in  a 
sorry  plight.  Her  lines  of  battle  would 
stretch  from  the  Ganges  and  the  Himalayas 
to  the  Soudan,  and  from  the  Soudan  to  the 
Channel.  Her  Indian  empire  would  rock 
to  the  center.  Her  African  colonies  would 
be  endangered.  It  is  not  an  easy  matter 
to  dispose  of  two  hundred  million  religious 
fanatics.  It  may  be  that  the  Ottoman  em- 
pire would  collapse  at  the  first  determined 
touch ;  and  it  may  be  that  the  attempt  would 
prove  to  be  the  Armageddon  of  history. 
It  certainly  does  not  follow  that  England's 
hesitancy  is  due  either  to  indifference  or  to 


106  The  World  for  Christ. 

cowardice.  It  is  the  cost  which  she  is 
counting.  For  Islam  is  unchanged.  The 
old  ferocity  leaps  in  its  veins.  As  a  reli- 
gion, it  is  vastly  superior  to  the  idolatry 
which  it  supplanted,  and  to  the  Christianity 
which  it  conquered,  and  to  the  paganism  by 
which  it  is  surrounded.  It  has  often  been 
said  that  the  conversion  of  China  is  the  su- 
preme task  of  Christian  evangelization ;  but 
the  conviction  is  deepening  that  the  final 
and  severest  grapple  must  be  between  the 
Crescent  and  the  Cross.  And  this  last 
chapter  will  be  written  in  anguish  and 
blood,  comparable  only  to  that  with  which 
Christian  history  opens  in  the  fierceness  of 
the  Roman  hostility.  For  the  humaneness 
which  entered  into  Roman  law  has  no  place 
in  the  institutions  of  Islam. 

An  equally  inveterate  and  more  ancient 
feud  exists  between  the  Christian  and  the 
Jew;  and  the  scorn  of  the  Jew  is  only  less 
pronounced  than  the  contempt  of  the  Mo- 
hammedan. Our  missionary  work  among 
the  Jews  has  been  uniformly  difficult  and 
discouraging,  and  the  Pauline  theodicy  in 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.      107 

the  ninth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  carries  in  it  the  inti- 
mation that  Israel's  conversion  must  come 
from  within  rather  than  from  without ;  that 
it  must  be  inaugurated  by  an  era  corre- 
sponding to  the  great  Protestant  Reforma- 
tion. There  are  signs  of  disintegration  in 
Judaism,  but  these  are  counterbalanced  by 
a  solidarity  which,  in  Europe,  at  least,  has 
aroused  a  new  anti-Semitic  movement ;  and, 
as  yet,  we  wait  for  Israel's  restoration  to 
the  faith  which  was  cradled  in  its  syna- 
gogues. 

Perhaps  you  will  think  the  picture  suffi- 
ciently dark  and  discouraging.  But  there 
is  an  invisible  resistance  which  is  more  ap- 
palling than  all  the  rest,  if  the  witness  of 
Holy  Scripture  be  true.  For  we  wrestle  not 
only  against  flesh  and  blood,  against  human 
prejudices  and  passions,  but  against  princi- 
palities and  powers  and  spiritual  wickedness 
in  high  places,  against  the  prince  of  the 
power  of  the  air.  The  visible  antagonism 
we  can  measure  and  tabulate ;  the  resources 
of  the  invisible  foe  defy  our  calculation. 


108  The  World  for  Christ. 

Not  the  spears  of  men  alone  must  be  broken 
upon  our  shields,  but  the  fiery  darts  of  the 
devil.  I  am  aware  that  in  many  quarters 
Satan  is  regarded  as  a  personification,  not  a 
person.  But,  for  one,  I  cannot  rest  in  this 
rhetorical  interpretation.  It  certainly  does 
violence  to  the  testimony  of  Christ  and  to 
the  language  of  Paul.  And  in  a  volume 
which  recently  found  its  way  to  my  study 
table,  the  reality  of  present  demoniacal  pos- 
session is  supported  by  a  mass  of  carefully 
sifted  evidence  which  is  positively  startling. 
The  book  to  which  I  refer  is  a  volume  of 
nearly  five  hundred  pages  from  the  pen  of 
Dr.  John  L.  Nevins,  who  died  in  the  fall  of 
1893,  and  had  been  a  missionary  in  China 
for  forty  years.  It  is  worthy  of  careful 
perusal,  whatever  judgment  may  be  passed 
upon  its  conclusions.  There  is,  at  least, 
no  good  ground  for  denying  Satanic  agency, 
and  this  makes  it  wise  to  take  it  into  ac- 
count in  measuring  the  resistance  which  the 
Gospel  must  be  prepared  to  overcome. 

I  have  done.     My  task  has  not  been  a 
pleasant  one,  but  it  could  not  be  evaded. 


The  Resistance  to  be  Overcome.      109 

The  review  should  have  a  salutary  effect. 
It  should  stiffen  the  fiber  of  our  courage. 
It  should  lead  us  to  settle  our  differences 
and  concentrate  our  energies.  We  have  no 
powder  to  waste  upon  each  other.  The 
devil  laughs  while  we  quarrel,  just  as  the 
sultan  chuckles  when  America  gets  mad 
and  Christian  powers  snarl  at  each  other. 
It  should  enlarge  our  patience  and  keep  us 
serene  when  reverses  overwhelm  us,  when 
the  fruits  of  half  a  century  go  down  in  a 
night.  They  do  not  go  down.  Every  Cal- 
vary has  its  Easter ;  and  He  who  wrenched 
the  gates  of  death  from  their  hoary  hinges 
will  subdue  the  world  of  mortal  men,  and 
overwhelm  the  powers  of  darkness  with 
confusion  and  eternal  disaster.  Upon  the 
flaming  heavens  he  has  set  his  fiery  cross, 
and  by  that  sign  we  conquer ! 


Zhc  Xeabere  to  be  appointeb 


V. 
The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed* 

IN  the  great  commission,  as  phrased  in  the 
first  gospel,  the  eleven  apostles  were 
commanded  to  disciple  all  nations,  and  to 
secure  their  obedience  to  all  that  Christ  had 
enjoined.  And  among  the  things  enjoined 
was  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  to  every 
creature.  So  that  conversion  carried  with  it 
consecration  to  missionary  service.  Every 
believer  was  to  be  an  apostle,  a  messenger 
of  Jesus  Christ.  In  the  early  Church,  ad- 
ministration was  the  only  thing  which  was 
delegated  to  certain  men  appointed  from 
the  body  of  disciples.  Deacons  were  ofii- 
cers  charged  with  the  care  and  the  distri- 
bution of  moneys  contributed  for  the  poor. 
Bishops,  as  the  word  suggests,  were  over- 
seers, whose  duty  it  was  to  maintain  such 
discipline  as  the  membership  required. 
The  synagogue  was  the  pattern  of  the 
church,  and  in  the  synagogue  the  officers 
discharged  administrative  functions.    They 


114  The  World  for  Christ. 

simply  ruled.  They  were  neither  priests 
nor  prophets.  They  could  not  sacrifice  at 
the  altar,  and  they  had  no  monopoly  of 
teaching.  The  right  of  public  address  be- 
longed to  every  man  who  was  qualified  to 
exercise  it,  under  such  restrictions  as  were 
demanded  by  public  order.  The  priestly 
office  terminated  with  the  perfect  offering 
of  Jesus  Christ,  who  remains  the  sole  and 
eternal  High  Priest  of  the  new  dispensation. 
The  prophetic  office  has  survived  in  Chris- 
tianity, and,  by  the  express  terms  of  the 
great  commission,  its  duties  and  privileges 
have  been  laid  upon  the  entire  membership. 
It  is  not  the  prerogative  of  a  class ;  it  is  the 
vocation  of  each,  in  accordance  with  the 
prophecy  which  Peter  quoted  on  the  day  of 
Pentecost :  *  *  It  shall  come  to  pass  in  the 
last  days,  saith  God,  I  will  pour  out  of  my 
Spirit  upon  all  flesh:  and  your  sons  and 
your  daughters  shall  prophesy."  Whatever 
the  miracle  of  tongues  on  that  memorable 
day  may  have  been,  the  one  hundred  and 
twenty,  and  not  the  eleven  alone,  shared  in 
its  anointing;  for  **  they  were  all  filled  with 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        115 

the  Holy  Ghost,  and  began  to  speak  with 
other  tongues,  as  the  Spirit  gave  them  ut- 
terance." Later,  the  same  gifts  descended 
upon  a  company  of  Gentiles  gathered  in  the 
home  of  Cornelius,  and  in  the  presence  of 
Peter,  who  witnessed  the  fact  with  undis- 
guised amazement.  The  prophetic  office 
became  a  universal  vocation,  which  could 
neither  be  given  nor  taken  away  by  Church 
authority.  It  inhered  in  the  Church  as  the 
Body  of  Christ,  and  was,  consequently, 
shared  by  every  member  of  it.  Its  deco- 
rous regulation  was  the  only  thing  over 
which  the  congregation  exercised  any 
power. 

This,  among  other  things,  led  to  the 
prohibition  of  women  speaking  in  the  pub- 
lic assemblies,  as  offensive  to  current  social 
usage ;  but  the  fact  that  Philip  had  four 
unmarried  daughters  who  were  among  the 
recognized  preachers  in  Caesarea  shows  that 
among  the  Jewish  churches  the  more  lib- 
eral policy  of  the  Old  Testament  continued, 
and  woman's  public  share  in  the  ministry 
was  not  regarded  with  aversion.     The  ques- 


116  The  World  for  Christ. 

tion  appears  as  one  in  suspense  and  deter- 
mined by  local  usages  and  social  customs, 
adjusting  itself  to  the  state  of  general  pub- 
lic opinion.  It  is  not  a  question  whether 
woman  shares  with  man  in  the  right  of 
prophesying,  but  how  the  right  shall  be 
exercised  so  as  not  to  shock  the  feelings  of 
the  hearers.  The  general  principle  applied 
was  that  God  is  the  God  of  order,  not  of 
confusion.  As  to  the  right  of  prophecy  it- 
self, it  does  not  seem  to  me  to  admit  of 
doubt,  and  it  is  demanded  by  the  very  gen- 
ius of  Christianity,  which  recognizes  no 
distinction  of  sex  in  its  ethical  injunctions, 
that  it  was  regarded  as  a  universal  voca- 
tion. Every  believer  is  called,  in  some 
way,  to  the  ministry  of  the  word.  To 
preach  the  Gospel  is  the  duty  of  each ;  in 
fact,  the  Church  has  nothing  else  to  do. 
Of  course,  such  a  view  must  largely  modify 
the  traditional  notions  as  to  what  constitutes 
a  call  to  the  ministry.  If  the  vocation  be  a 
universal  one,  the  only  matter  which  re- 
quires careful  consideration  is  how  each  can 
most  effectively  discharge  the  duty  which  is 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        117 

binding  upon  all.  For  preachers  are  needed, 
not  only  in  the  pulpit  and  on  the  days  set 
apart  to  public  worship,  but  on  the  street 
and  every  day  of  the  week.  The  Sunday 
school  teacher  is  the  prophet  of  her  class. 
The  mother  is  the  prophet  when  infant  lips 
repeat  her  prayer.  The  merchant  is  the 
prophet  when  he  carries  his  religion  into 
his  business.  The  politician  is  the  prophet 
when  he  carries  his  conscience  into  the 
caucus. 

All  this,  I  am  perfectly  aware,  is  com- 
monplace. We  are  never  weary  of  in- 
sisting that  there  is  no  clerical  class,  that 
nothing  is  more  sacred  than  the  secular; 
and  yet  we  perpetually  go  back  upon  our 
theory  by  talking  about  a  special  call  to  the 
ministry.  I  certainly  believe  in  such  a  call, 
but  I  do  as  certainly  believe  that  any  honest 
work  is  a  divine  vocation.  Every  man  and 
woman  is  called  to  do  that  which  he  or  she 
is  fitted  to  do.  In  this  sphere,  at  least, 
obligation  is  determined  and  measured  by 
ability.  What  Christians  need  to  learn  is 
that  they  are  the  stewards  of  God  and  the 


118  The  World  for  Christ. 

servants  of  Jesus  Christ;  and  when  that 
conviction  shall  seize  the  Church,  the  pulpits 
will  be  manned  as  they  never  have  been 
before.  The  right  men  will  gravitate  to 
them  as  naturally  and  noiselessly  as  the  day 
dawns.  * '  Are  you  going  to  send  your  son 
to  college?  "  a  father  was  asked.  *'  No!  " 
was  the  prompt  reply ;  *  *  I  am  not  going 
to  spend  five  thousand  dollars  on  a  five- 
dollar  boy."  I  used  to  laugh  at  that  story; 
I  have  ceased  to  regard  it  as  funny.  It  is 
coarse  and  vulgar;  for  the  boy  thus  con- 
temptuously labeled  may,  if  he  only  find 
the  place  for  which  he  is  fitted,  render  as 
large,  and  even  larger,  service  to  humanity 
and  to  God,  as  another  whom  it  has  taken 
five  thousand  dollars  to  equip  for  his  work. 
It  is  no  man's  discredit  that  he  cannot 
preach ;  it  is  no  man's  sign  of  superiority 
that  he  can  preach.  We  are  all  kings  and 
priests  if  we  do  our  very  best,  and  if  we  do 
it  to  please  Him  who  loved  us  and  gave 
himself  for  us.  To  that  we  are  all  ordained 
by  the  laying  on  of  the  palms  that  were 
pierced  for  our  salvation. 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        119 

If  the  call  to  the  formal  ministry  is  a 
matter  which  must  be  determined  by  care- 
ful and  conscientious  inquiry  of  personal 
fitness,  under  the  general  law  of  Christian 
consecration,  in  the  use  of  what  has  been 
well  called  '*  sanctified  common  sense,"  the 
same  principle  applies  to  the  choice  of  the 
foreign  field  by  any  who  have  chosen  the 
Christian  ministry  as  their  vocation.  The 
question  is  one  of  fitness;  and  it  may  be 
laid  down  as  a  general  rule  that  where  the 
mind  works  untrammeled,  where  it  surren- 
ders neither  to  prejudice  nor  to  ambition, 
its  free  preference  will  be  an  expression 
of  its  fitness.  The  choice  will  be  as  the 
man  is.  It  is  just  here  that  the  crisis  of 
moral  conflict  may  come.  Many  a  man 
kicks  against  the  pricks,  and  many  another 
man  runs  before  he  is  sent.  It  is  not  a 
light  thing  for  any  of  us  to  be  content 
with  what  we  are,  thousfh  I  believe  what 
my  friend.  Dr.  Storrs,  once  said  to  me, 
that  *'  a  man  must  work  like  sixty  to  be 
himself."  But  our  freedom  lies  in  our 
obedience,  in  our  joyful  surrender  to  Him 


120  The  World  for  Christ. 

who  separates   us  from  birth  to  a  definite 
service. 

So  far  as  this  is  Calvinism,  I  am  sure  that 
no  Methodist  will  find  fault  with  it.  We  all 
believe  in  the  election  to  service,  though  even 
this  election  is  not  unconditional,  overriding 
the  free  will  in  man  and  irresistible  in  its 
pressure.  You  may  miss  your  calling,  but 
you  can  find  your  appointed  place  only  as  you 
are  obedient  to  the  heavenly  vision.  Obe- 
dience to  that  call  of  duty  will  be  your  free- 
dom. The  ought  will  prove  itself  to  be  the 
fit.  The  way  may  be  made  plain  to  you  at 
a  very  early  period,  and  it  may  be  that  the 
vision  will  tarry  many  days.  There  came  a 
time  in  Paul's  life  when  he  was  convinced 
that  from  his  very  birth  Christ  had  sepa- 
rated him  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  Gen- 
tiles, but  years  passed  before  he  broke  away 
entirely  from  the  synagogue.  It  was  a  hard 
thing  for  him  to  do,  and  yet  it  was  the  in- 
evitable necessity  laid  upon  him  unless  he 
proved  false  alike  to  himself  and  to  Christ. 
Of  all  the  apostles  he  alone  was  fitted  to 
become,  by  native  equipment,  by  training, 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        121 

and  by  experience,  the  apostle  to  the  Gen- 
tiles. Neither  Peter,  nor  James,  nor  John 
could  have  done  his  work ;  and  he  could 
not  have  done  theirs.  But  his  specific  duty 
was  not  determined  by  anything  special  in 
the  call  as  such ;  it  was  determined  solely 
by  his  personal  fitness.  He  fell  into  his 
place  as  water  runs  down  hill  when  he 
once  made  up  his  mind  not  to  confer  with 
flesh  and  blood,  but  to  take  the  place  for 
which  from  birth  he  had  been  set  apart. 
Men  are  sure  to  find  their  right  places 
when  they  are  simply  anxious  to  serve  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  If  in  doing  that  they 
remain  at  home,  they  are  no  worse ;  and  if 
they  leave  their  kindred,  they  are  no  bet- 
ter. Some  have  given  as  a  reason  why 
they  are  disposed  to  enter  the  foreign  field, 
the  fact  that  conscience  enjoined  them  to 
go  where  the  need  was  greatest.  But  that 
would  compel  us  all  to  go ;  and  that  would 
have  sent  every  disciple  in  Jerusalem  into 
the  pagan  provinces.  Besides,  it  is  hazard- 
ous to  say  where  the  need  is  greatest, 
whether  in  China  or  the  United  States,  in 


122  The  World  for  Christ. 

Peking  or  in  Syracuse.  The  truth  is,  that 
where  the  question  is  one  of  universal  con- 
quest, there  can  be  no  discrimination  of  one 
section  as  against  another.  Each  man  must 
determine  his  duty  for  himself,  permitting 
neither  sentiment  nor  romance  to  influence 
him  unduly. 

If  we  may  regard  the  apostle  Paul  as  the 
typical  foreign  missionary,  an  analysis  of 
his  qualifications  may  help  us  to  decide  the 
question  to  whom  the  leadership  in  the  for- 
eign work  should  be  intrusted.  And  in  his 
case  the  physical  qualifications  were  cer- 
tainly very  inferior.  I  doubt  whether  he 
could  have  passed  muster  in  any  of  our 
missionary  boards.  They  would  have  re- 
ported against  his  application,  unless,  in- 
deed, his  own  fiery  personal  conviction  had 
overawed  them.  For  I  imagine  that  he 
would  not  have  pleaded  in  tears,  but  would 
have  spoken  to  them  as  Farel  did  to  Calvin 
at  Geneva.  A  sound  body  is  not  to  be  de- 
spised, but  Paul  is  not  the  only  man  in  his- 
tory, the  might  of  whose  spirit  triumphed 
over  the  flesh.     In  great  physical  weakness 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        123 

did  he  preach  the  Gospel.  His  bodily  pres- 
ence was  offensive  to  the  supple  and  ath- 
letic Greeks,  and  his  speech  was  contempt- 
ible to  their  cultured  ears.  But  his  word 
was  in  demonstration  of  the  Spirit  and  in 
power,  and  all  were  swept  by  the  torrent  of 
his  massive  eloquence.  An  abounding 
physical  vitality  and  a  stalwart  form  did 
not  enter  into  the  qualifications  which  made 
him  unsurpassed  in  the  sphere  of  his  spe- 
cial service.  And  they  have  been  wanting 
in  many  of  our  most  successful  missionaries 
at  the  front. 

The  truth  is,  we  know  too  little  of  the 
secret  of  physical  endurance  to  apply  the 
test.  Surprises  are  of  daily  occurrence. 
The  strongest  and  most  compactly  built 
fall  suddenly  at  our  side,  while  apparently 
physical  wrecks  pull  through  the  threescore 
years  and  ten  to  the  amazement  of  all  who 
know  them.  Forty  years  before  he  died 
Dr.  Howard  Crosby  was  told  that  he  could 
live  only  a  year  or  two ;  yet  he  managed  to 
be  a  pretty  lively  invalid.  There  are  ener- 
gies lodged  in  an  earnest  soul,  fearless  of 


124  The  World  for  Christ. 

death  and  passionately  intent  upon  making 
the  most  of  life,  which  will  carry  it  triumph- 
antly through  many  a  physical  stress  and 
strain.  The  mind-cure  and  the  faith-cure 
are  to  me  shallow  and  silly  vagaries ;  and 
yet,  that  the  soul  rules  the  body  and  that 
God  supports  the  sinking  frame  are  matters 
about  which  I  have  no  more  doubt  than  I 
have  of  my  own  existence.  I  know  that 
once  and  again  I  have  shaken  off  the 
''grippe"  by  a  pulpit  sweat.  The  forced 
action  of  the  heart,  sending  the  pulse  up  to 
a  hundred  and  forty,  burned  the  insidious 
poison  out  when  medicines  could  not  reach 
it.  There  is  no  miracle  in  such  cases,  but 
the  mind  does  triumph  over  the  body. 

The  qualifications  of  the  great  apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  were  mental  and  spiritual. 
And  first  among  them  was  the  training 
which  he  had  received  in  Tarsus,  his  native 
city.  Paul's  acquaintance  with  Greek  cul- 
ture has  probably  been  overrated.  The  Pla- 
tonic philosophy  and  the  Aristotelian  logic 
do  not  seem  to  have  influenced  him.  His 
style  is  Hebraistic  and  his  logic  is  rabbinic. 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        125 

But  he  knew  the  pagan  mind  by  daily  con- 
tact with  it  from  childhood,  and  Greek  was 
not  to  him  a  foreign  tongue.  He  could 
speak  it,  and  write  in  it,  more  easily  and 
fluently,  and  with  more  precision,  than  his 
apostolic  contemporaries ;  and  the  men  who 
were  most  intimately  associated  with  him, 
such  as  Timothy  and  Titus  and  Luke,  had 
the  same  advantage.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  linguistic  facility.  Not  all  men  can  ac- 
quire a  foreign  tongue  with  ease,  and  it  is 
still  more  difficult  to  enter  into  the  mental 
life  of  another  people,  and  so  master  its 
speech  from  within.  But  unless  the  latter 
can  be  done,  the  language  will  remain  an 
unfamiliar  and  unwieldy  instrument.  To 
preach  the  Gospel  in  a  foreign  tongue  de- 
mands a  certain  mental  elasticity  and  alert- 
ness, which  is  not  a  common  gift ;  and  he 
who  discovers  that  the  college  exercises  in 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew  are  a  weariness 
to  the  flesh,  and  a  torture  to  the  spirit,  may 
as  well  make  up  his  mind  that  the  Lord 
never  intended  that  he  should  go  to  China. 
Let  him  be  content  to  preach  in  his  mother 


126  The  World  for  Christ. 

tongue,  which  will  probably  tax  him  to  the 
utmost. 

Nor,  in  the  second  place,  should  it  be 
overlooked  that  the  foreign  missionary 
among  the  apostles  was  the  most  carefully 
educated  of  them  all.  He  had  gone  from 
Tarsus  to  Jerusalem,  and  sat  at  the  feet  of 
the  great  Gamaliel.  He  was  the  only  col- 
lege graduate.  There  may  be  room  for  lay 
evangelists,  with  the  scantiest  of  educa- 
tional preparation,  in  lands  where  Chris- 
tianity has  become  naturalized — though 
even  here  the  necessity  of  a  thoroughly 
equipped  ministry  is  greater  than  ever; 
but  the  men  who  are  to  subdue  the  pagan- 
ism of  Asia  and  Africa  cannot  be  recruited 
from  the  ranks  of  the  undisciplined.  He 
who  sets  his  heart  upon  such  a  task  should 
give  earnest  heed  to  the  inexorable  demand 
of  the  most  thorough  educational  discipline 
available.  The  picket  line  of  an  army  re- 
quires the  keenest  eyes  and  the  best  marks- 
men. 

A  third  qualification  of  the  apostle  Paul 
was  his  thorough  grounding  in  the  teach- 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        127 

ings  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures.  He 
had  mastered  his  Bible.  The  new  things 
in  the  Gospel  of  Christ  were  shown  by  him 
to  be  ''according  to  the  Scriptures."  The 
ancient  faith  had  revived  in  the  new.  Not 
its  novelty,  but  its  antiquity,  mastered  him. 
His  radicalism  was  the  intensest  and  most 
vital  conservatism.  To  the  unbroken  his- 
torical continuity  of  revelation  he  held  fast ; 
and  with  this  impulse  behind  him  he  threw 
himself  upon  the  wavering  and  disintegrat- 
ing columns  of  paganism.  They  must  be 
men  of  clear  and  intense  theological  convic- 
tion who  follow  in  his  steps.  They  must 
be  rooted  and  grounded  in  the  historical 
verities  by  whose  proclamation  Christianity 
has  won  its  way.  At  home  it  may  answer 
for  the  preacher  to  be  the  mental  inferior, 
in  many  respects,  of  those  who  sit  in  the 
pews ;  he  may  even  have  hearers  who  are 
his  superiors  in  theological  knowledge ;  but 
it  is  disastrous  for  a  tyro  and  a  novice  to 
undertake  the  conversion  of  a  pagan  com- 
munity. There  is  something  in  the  slug- 
gishness of  the  Asiatic  intellect  which  im- 


128  The  World  for  Christ. 

presses  us  unfavorably.  Thought  seems  to 
move  at  a  snail's  pace.  The  silent  stare 
suggests  mental  somnolence.  We  miss  the 
alertness  and  quick  responsiveness  of  the 
Occident.  But  it  may  be  fairly  doubted 
whether,  if  the  relations  were  reversed,  and 
we  should  sit  at  the  feet  of  oriental  teach- 
ers, they  would  not  regard  us  as  exceed- 
ingly stupid.  They  certainly  master  our 
alphabet  more  easily  than  we  master  their 
vocabulary.  There  are  in  East  India  many 
natives  who  use  our  English  tongue  with 
marvelous  facility,  and  not  a  few  have  ex- 
hibited a  rare  suppleness  and  grace  in  rhe- 
torical expression.  It  certainly  cannot  be 
said  that  the  Asiatic  races  are  wanting  in 
native  mental  vigor.  It  is,  as  Sir  Arthur 
Balfour  suggests,  in  social  integration  that 
they  are  seriously  lacking ;  without  which, 
beyond  a  certain  point,  communities  remain 
stationary.  Their  stagnation  is  the  result 
of  isolation — isolation  from  other  races  and 
governments,  and  isolation  among  them- 
selves. They  become  ropes  of  sand,  instead 
of   vital    and   progressive    political   organ- 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        129 

isms.  When,  as  in  the  case  of  Japan,  that 
social  integration  has  once  set  in,  and  pa- 
triotism has  come  to  its  birth,  the  world 
looks  on  in  amazement  at  the  ease  with 
which  the  leap  is  made  from  the  dark  age 
to  the  modern  time.  It  is  salutary  for  us  to 
remember  that  man  is  man,  wherever  he  is 
found.  There  are  not  many  simple-minded 
children  of  nature ;  and  the  kindergarten 
methods  of  religion  are  not  the  ones  by 
which  the  current  paganisms  will  be  van- 
quished. The  leaders  in  that  crusade  must 
be  men  who  have  a  virile  theology,  drawn 
from  the  infallible  word,  and  held  with  in- 
telligent tenacity. 

The  absence,  in  the  apostle  Paul,  of  the 
speculative  mood  is  as  noteworthy  as  his 
firm  adherence  to  the  prophetic  word  and 
his  singular  penetration  of  mind  in  its  use. 
He  was  a  great,  a  clear,  a  solid  thinker ;  but 
he  was  not  a  metaphysician.  That  some 
should  describe  him  as  a  poet  and  mystic 
is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  literature.  Fre- 
quently does  he  approach  the  line  which 
divides    induction     from   speculation ;    but 


130  The  World  for  Christ. 

he  never  crosses  it.  There  is  a  sobriety  in 
his  exposition  which  is  amazing  in  one 
whose  mental  action  is  so  intense.  It  can 
be  explained  as  due  only  either  to  deliber- 
ate self-restraint,  or  to  the  absence  of  the 
speculative  tendency.  The  contrast  is  im- 
mense when  you  compare  his  reasoning 
with  that  of  Origen,  or  Augustine,  or  Hegel. 
And  in  this  respect  he  is,  in  my  judgment, 
the  typical  preacher  of  the  Gospel  to  heathen 
nations.  The  world  by  wisdom  knows  not 
God,  and  the  speculative  theologians  will 
never  remove  the  fatal  ignorance.  The 
emergence  of  theological  speculation  is  in- 
evitable; and  in  settled  Christian  commu- 
nities there  will  always  be  some  who  will 
be  attracted  by  it.  It  cannot  be  kept  out  of 
the  pulpit,  nor  out  of  the  pew.  It  will 
claim  a  place  in  our  reviews,  and  demand 
audience  in  our  assemblies.  But  the  spec- 
ulative tendency  is  always  disposed  to  min- 
imize the  plain  facts  of  history,  and  to  tone 
down  the  sharp  contrasts  of  moral  life.  It 
gravitates  toward  a  monism  which  looks 
very  much  like  pantheism,  and  glories  in 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        131 

an  evolution  which  makes  sin  more  an 
infirmity  of  nature  than  a  crime  against  the 
law  of  God.  It  may  be  evangelical,  but  it 
cannot  be  evangelistic.  Its  language  is  too 
cumbrous  for  practical  use.  It  confuses 
plain  men.  And  the  language  confuses 
them  simply  because  the  type  of  thought 
is  misty  and  mystical. 

I  do  not  condemn  the  speculative  thinker, 
but  I  do  say  that  such  a  man  is  constitu- 
tionally unfitted  for  the  foreign  missionary 
service.  You  are  aware  that  for  a  dozen 
years  the  American  Board  had  a  theological 
controversy  on  its  hands.  The  question 
under  discussion  was  that  of  Probation  after 
Death.  That  the  Scriptures  were  silent  on 
the  subject  was  conceded  even  by  its  advo- 
cates. They  only  claimed  that  it  was  a  per- 
missible hypothesis,  and  that  missionaries 
did  not  part  with  their  speculative  freedom 
when  they  accepted  a  commission.  And 
clearly,  this  contention  could  not  be  gain- 
said; and  yet,  somehow,  there  was  a  vague 
feeling  that  men  who  were  more  inclined  to 
construct  a  speculative  theodicy,  than  to  rest 


132  The  World  for  Christ. 

content  with  a  revealed  theology,  in  which 
there  must  be  a  border  line  of  silence,  should 
not  be  encouraged  to  offer  themselves  for 
foreign  missionary  service.  Some,  indeed, 
insisted  that  the  theory  of  probation  after 
death  was  a  heresy  as  destructive  as  the 
denial  of  the  divinity  of  our  Lord.  The 
majority  could  not  be  induced  to  take  that 
ground.  They  regarded  the  notion  as  of 
no  practical  value,  and  as  incapable  of  scrip- 
tural proof,  though  good  and  true  men  had 
given  it  their  support.  Principal  Fair- 
bairn  goes  much  farther,  and  contends 
that  moral  probation  must  be  eternal  in 
the  nature  of  the  case;  which,  again, 
is  neither  self-evident  nor  capable  of 
proof.  The  learned  principal  is  in  no  danger 
of  being  repudiated  by  his  brethren,  but  he 
certainly  ventured  upon  ground  never  in- 
vaded by  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  I 
have  frequently  had  occasion  to  notice  the 
mental  habit  of  our  most  efficient  home  mis- 
sionaries, and  I  have  always  found  in  them 
the  predominance  of  the  practical  over  the 
speculative  temperament.     The  instrument 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        133 

was  fitted  to  the  work,  and  the  adjustment 
was  perfectly  natural.  The  metaphysician 
is  out  of  place  in  a  camp  of  miners.  In  fact, 
metaphysics  is  a  hindrance  in  any  pulpit, 
and  the  hearers  most  given  to  speculation 
are  the  first  to  weary  of  a  metaphysical 
preacher.  A  true  metaphysics  there  is  and 
must  be  in  Christianity,  as  the  religion  of 
a  divine  and  eternal  redemption ;  but  you 
might  as  well  send  men  into  the  untrodden 
forests  with  razors  for  axes,  as  to  commit 
the  evangelization  of  the  world  to  specula- 
tive theologians.  Audacity  should  stay  at 
home;  it  is  the  cautious  and  conservative 
thinker  who  is  needed  at  the  front. 

No  man  ever  surpassed  the  great  apostle 
in  the  positiveness  of  his  teaching.  He  in- 
voked an  anathema  upon  any  one  who 
should  venture  to  preach  any  other  gospel, 
even  though  he  were  an  angel  from  heaven. 
And  yet  there  was  not  a  particle  of  fanati- 
cism in  his  constitution.  The  intensity  of 
his  personal  conviction  was  fibered  upon  an 
equally  remarkable  breadth  of  mental  sym- 
pathy.    He   knew   how   to   think,   and   to 


134  The  World  for  Christ. 

speak,  the  truth  in  love.  The  Jews  hated 
and  persecuted  him,  but  he  recognized  the 
honesty  of  their  blind  zeal.  The  supersti- 
tions and  idolatries  of  the  pagan  world  he 
traced  to  a  vague  seeking  after  God,  which 
had  resulted  in  an  ever- widening  ignorance 
through  the  growing  supremacy  of  an  im- 
moral life.  The  law  of  God  he  declared  to 
be  written  upon  every  human  heart.  He 
was  sympathetic  in  his  iconoclasm;  not 
sympathetic  with  the  religion  in  which  the 
pagan  world  was  buried,  but  sympathetic 
with  the  souls  which  had  woven  these 
shrouds,  and  in  which  their  spiritual  life 
and  hope  had  been  stifled. 

This  is  the  true  sympathetic  attitude. 
Christianity  cannot  yield  its  claim  to  suprem- 
acy. It  will  not  enroll  Christ  in  the  Panthe- 
on. It  will  not  consent  to  found  a  fraternity 
in  any  Parliament  of  Religions.  But  the 
Christ  whom  it  proclaims  and  worships  is  he 
who  lighteth  every  man.  He  is  the  Word 
from  everlasting,  energizing  a  world  uncon- 
scious of  his  presence,  whose  life  is  the  light 
of  men.     The  attitude  of  early  Christianity 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        135 

to  the  pagan  culture  was  sympathetic,  as 
well  as  critical.  Its  elements  of  truth  were 
freely  recognized  and  appropriated  ;  its  de- 
fects were  mercilessly  exposed.  Philosophy 
became  for  many  the  vestibule  of  entrance 
into  the  Christian  faith.  In  fact,  the  proc- 
ess went  so  far,  that  many  maintain  that 
the  primitive  Gospel  was  so  thoroughly 
Grecianized  as  to  make  it  almost  impossible 
to  eliminate  the  original  elements.  I  can- 
not but  think  this  judgment  to  be  extreme, 
and  that  much  of  what  is  called  Greek  col- 
oring is  simply  in  the  grain  of  universal 
logic ;  but  it  serves  to  show  that  the  Pauline 
sympathy  was  not  an  unimportant  factor  in 
the  conversion  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
world.  The  classics  were  not  consigned  to 
the  flames.  The  poets  and  the  philosophers 
were  not  gibbeted.  They  retain  their  place 
in  our  literature  and  in  the  curriculum  of 
our  Christian  colleges.  Christianity  is  an 
assimilating  religion,  because  it  traces  all 
rational  and  moral  life  to  the  Eternal  Word, 
who  in  Jesus  Christ  became  flesh.  Thus, 
its  attitude  of  antagonism  is  also  an  attitude 


136  The  World  for  Christ. 

of  sympathy.  Its  iconoclasm  issues  in 
emancipation.  Him,  whom  men  ignorantly 
worship,  it  proclaims  unto  them.  This 
sympathetic  attitude,  which  recognizes  the 
identity  of  all  religions  at  the  root,  while 
firmly  holding  fast  to  the  exclusive  and  sov- 
ereign authority  of  the  Gospel,  is  an  indis- 
pensable qualification  for  the  Christian 
missionary. 

More  than  once  the  brief  record  in  the 
Book  of  Acts  shows  us  the  apostle  Paul  tell- 
ing the  story  of  his  wonderful  conversion. 
He  did  this  before  the  excited  and  infuri- 
ated throng  at  Jerusalem,  and  again  in  the 
presence  of  Festus  and  Agrippa.  And  the 
form  into  which  he  casts  the  argument  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  Romans,  shows  how 
deeply  grounded  his  doctrine  of  salvation 
was  in  his  personal  experience.  He  knew 
that  he  had  passed  from  death  unto  life. 
Christ  dwelt  in  him  by  faith,  and  he  knew 
when  and  where  it  was  that  it  pleased  God 
to  reveal  his  Son  in  him.  He  never  in- 
sisted that  others  must  conform  to  the  type 
of  his  personal  experience ;  in  fact,  he  ap- 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        137 

pears  to  have  been  the  only  apostle  in  whom 
Christian  discipleship  was  marked  by  a  sharp 
transition ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
this  vivid  personal  experience  had  much  to 
do  with  the  tumultuous  energy  of  his  apos- 
tolic ministry.  Luther  reminds  us  of  him, 
in  whom  the  spiritual  change  was  equally 
marked;  and  the  pioneers  of  Methodism 
could  tell  a  similar  story  as  to  when  and 
where  they  were  converted  to  God.  Such 
men  are  needed  when  a  new  era  of  spiritual 
life  opens — men  in  whom  personal  ex- 
perience and  doctrine  coalesce.  All  the 
great  leaders  in  modern  revivals  have  been 
men  of  that  stamp.  Their  conversion  to 
Christ  was  a  momentous  turning-point  in 
conscious  conviction  and  choice. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  make  such  an  experience 
a  universal  test,  either  for  the  pulpit  or  for 
the  pew.  Still,  it  is  a  power  anywhere  and 
everywhere,  and  it  gives  tremendous  ad- 
vantage to  the  man  who  is  summoned  to 
face,  year  in  and  year  out,  the  incredulity, 
indifference,  and  scorn  of  unbelieving  and 
pagan  communities.      The   hiding   of   his 


138  The  World  for  Christ. 

power,  tinder  God,  must  be  in  his  own  ex- 
perience, with  which  he  may  confront  and 
convince  his  hearers.  Nothing,  we  are 
told,  is  more  oppressive  in  pagan  lands  than 
the  mental  and  moral  atmosphere  in  which 
the  life  moves.  There  is  no  ozone  in  the 
air,  nothing  to  support  and  quicken  the 
weary  toiler.  He  lives  in  a  vacuum,  in  per- 
petual danger  of  suffocation.  Such  a  man 
must  generate  his  own  oxygen,  must  have 
such  an  abounding  vitality  of  personal  con- 
viction and  experience  that  it  cannot  suffer 
from  the  malarial  contact.  Every  preacher, 
at  home  and  abroad,  should  be  able  to 
say  with  Paul,  '*!  know  whom  I  have  be- 
lieved;*' and  the  more  emphatically  he  can 
make  that  confession  the  better  is  he  qual- 
ified to  take  his  place  in  the  picket  line  of 
Christian  advance. 

It  may  seem,  in  the  review,  as  if  this 
catalogue  of  qualifications,  essential  to  in- 
sure success  in  assuming  the  burdens  of 
missionary  service,  must  discourage  men 
and  women  from  devoting  themselves  to  it. 
But  if  we  have  not  erred  in  our  estimate  of 


The  Leaders  to  be  Appointed.        139 

the  field  which  is  to  be  won,  and  the  resist- 
ance which  is  to  be  overcome,  we  cannot 
have  supposed  that  a  low  grade  of  leader- 
ship could  meet  the  stern  demand.  The 
foreign  field  needs  the  best,  and  must  have 
the  best.  It  requires  the  clearest  personal 
Christian  experience,  the  most  steady  poise 
of  mind,  the  most  careful  and  thorough  edu- 
cational discipline,  the  most  genuine  and 
cosmopolitan  sympathy,  and  the  firmest 
theological  equipment,  which  can  be  found 
in  the  ranks  of  the  Church.  It  is  the  great- 
est task  committed  to  her  hands,  and  to  it 
she  may  well  consecrate  her  choicest  re- 
cruits. 


^be  Hgenciee  to  be  Cmplo^eb 


10 


I 


VI. 
The  Agencies  to  be  Employed* 

T  is  fortunate  for  us  that  there  is  such  a 


thing  as  a  history  of  Christian  missions. 
We  are  not  inaugurating  a  new  campaign, 
in  which  wisdom  can  be  gained  only  by 
long  and  severe  experience.  The  day  of 
experiment  lies  far  behind  us,  so  far,  indeed, 
that  its  outlines  have  become  dim  to  us,  as 
jagged  rocks,  and  precipitous  walls,  and 
perilous  paths  fade  away  in  curving  lines 
of  grace.  From  the  ridge  of  the  Col  de 
Balme,  Mont  Blanc  is  a  vision  of  beauty ; 
the  mountain  climber  comes  back  with  a 
different  story.  We  stand  appalled,  some- 
times, before  the  obstacles  which  must  be 
overcome  in  securing  the  universal  triumph 
of  the  Gospel ;  but  it  may  fairly  be  doubted 
whether  our  present  task  is  comparable,  in 
audacity  and  difficulty,  to  that  for  which  the 
early  Church  girded  itself  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Paul.  His  is  still  the  most  heroic 
figure  in  history.   "  Never,"  writes Uhlhorn, 


144  The  World  for  Christ. 

* '  in  the  whole  course  of  human  history, 
have  two  so  unequal  powers  stood  opposed 
to  each  other  as  ancient  heathenism  and 
early  Christianity,  the  Roman  State  and  the 
Christian  Church.  Apparently,  the  weak- 
est of  forces  confronted  the  strongest.  Re- 
member the  enormous  power  of  the  Roman 
empire;  consider  not  merely  the  material 
resources  of  the  State,  but  also  that  heathen- 
ism had  possession  of  every  sphere  of  life, 
public  and  private ;  that  it  filled  the  State 
and  the  family,  and  ruled  all  culture ;  and 
bear  in  mind,  besides,  the  tenacious  power 
dwelling  in  a  cultus  which  has  prevailed 
for  centuries.  Contrast  with  this  the  Chris- 
tian Church  as  it  was  in  its  beginnings, 
totally  destitute  of  all  this  might,  possess- 
ing neither  political  power  nor  wealth, 
neither  art  nor  science,  a  little  company, 
in  the  world's  judgment,  of  unlearned 
men,  fishermen,  publicans,  tentmakers, 
with  only  the  word  of  the  cross,  the  mes- 
sage that  the  promised  Messiah  had  ap- 
peared, that  in  the  crucified  and  risen  One 
there  is  salvation  for  all  peoples.     Verily, 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       145 

the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  a  grain  of 
mustard  seed,  small  and  insignificant;  is 
like  leaven,  little  as  compared  with  the  mass 
of  the  meal ;  but  it  is  a  living  seed,  it  is  a 
transforming  leaven,  it  bears  within  itself 
an  energy  which  is  not  of  this  world,  and 
therefore  is  mightier  than  the  whole  world." 
As  the  tentmaker  of  Tarsus  journeyed  from 
Antioch  to  Troas,  and  from  Troas  across 
the  ^gean  Sea  to  Philippi,  and  thence  to 
Thessalonica,  and  Berea,  and  Athens,  and 
Corinth,  and  thence  by  way  of  Ephesus  to 
Rome,  with  plans  carrying  him  as  far  as 
Spain,  who  would  have  dreamed  that  this 
man,  hated  by  his  own  countrymen,  ridi- 
culed by  the  philosophers,  heard  with  im- 
patience by  the  cultured,  scourged,  stoned, 
shipwrecked,  chained,  imprisoned,  be- 
headed, was  undermining  the  foundations 
of  paganism,  and  wresting  the  scepter  of 
power  from  the  hands  of  the  Caesars?  It  is 
all  simple,  sober  history.  A  fierce  and  long 
wrestle  it  was,  the  outline  of  which  cannot 
even  here  be  traced ;  but  the  imperial  city 
to-day  condenses  the  terrible  struggle  and 


146  The  World  for  Christ. 

the  decisive  result  in  that  remarkable  con- 
trast between  the  rained  arches  and  columns 
of  the  Forum  and  of  the  Palatine  Hill, 
and  the  great  church,  with  its  vast  and  airy 
dome,  which  hangs  over  the  spot  where 
Nero  reveled  in  the  horrible  butcheries  of 
his  Christian  subjects.  On  your  left,  as  you 
descend  the  Capitoline  Hill,  you  may  pass 
down  the  winding  stairs  of  stone  to  the 
dungeon  in  which  tradition  says  Paul  was 
immured;  and  then  you  may  go  to  the 
great  cathedral  beyond  the  walls,  which 
beare  his  name,  and  upon  whose  splendid 
marbles  and  mosaics  Pius  IX  alone  spent 
sixty  million  francs;  while  the  greatest 
church  among  the  English-speaking  nations, 
in  the  very  center  of  the  world's  metropolis, 
and  dwarfing  by  its  magnificent  proportions 
all  other  structures,  bears  the  name  of  this 
converted  Jew.  Ransack  the  past,  and 
match  the  story  if  you  can.  It  cannot  be 
done.  They  were  proud  men  whom  the 
Gospel  subdued  and  won.  They  were  strong 
men,  whose  swords  and  lances  had  made 
them  sovereign.     They  were  men  of  keen 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       147 

penetration,  incisive  in  criticism,  biting  in 
sarcasm,  haughty  in  their  bearing.  If  Nero 
is  a  type  of  Roman  brutality,  Celsus  is  a 
sample  of  Roman  acumen.  In  no  subse- 
quent period  has  the  disparity  between  the 
Christian  Church  and  its  adversaries  been 
so  great.  Constantine  surrendered  to  save 
his  throne;  and  even  Julian,  with  his 
masterful  resources,  could  not  sweep  back 
the  flood.  For  three  hundred  years  the 
battle  raged,  but  paganism  went  down, 
with  the  Coliseum,  moss-grown  and  de- 
serted, as  its  monument.  It  may  be  true, 
as  Hobbes  has  said,  that  the  papacy,  which 
came  after,  was  only  the  ghost  of  the  Roman 
empire,  sitting  crowned  upon  its  grave. 
That  paganism  was  vanquished  and  buried 
is  the  significant  fact.  If,  as  Thucydides 
says,  history  is  only  philosophy  teaching 
by  examples,  the  future  of  all  heathenism, 
when  confronted  by  the  Gospel,  is  written 
in  the  fate  of  Rome.  That  is  our  answer  to 
the  sneer  of  modern  skepticism,  in  the 
Church  and  out  of  it.  We  reply,  with  Uhl- 
horn,  that  Christianity  is  sure  to  conquer, 


148  The  World  for  Christ. 

because  in  its  conflict  with  the  paganism  of 
Rome  it  has  conquered,  capturing  the  cita- 
del and  holding  it.  Next  to  the  trumpet 
tones  of  inspired  prophecy  and  promise, 
there  is  nothing  so  calculated  to  stir  the 
pulses  of  Christian  ardor  as  a  review  of  the 
period  between  Paul's  martyrdom  and  the 
edict  of  Milan  in  313,  a  period  of  less  than 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

The  victory  was  the  triumph,  under  God, 
of  Paul.  And  as,  in  considering  the  quali- 
fications of  those  to  whom  is  intrusted  the 
leadership  in  the  world's  conversion  to 
Christ,  we  studied  the  great  apostle  as  the 
typical  pioneer,  so  in  the  choice  of  the 
agencies  which  are  to  be  employed,  we  can 
do  no  better  than  to  study  carefully  the 
methods  which  he  and  his  successors  used, 
and  the  power  upon  which  they  relied.  The 
old  weapons  have  not  lost  their  edge,  and 
there  are  none  which  can  take  their  place. 

The  apostle  tells  us  that  in  his  preaching 
he  endeavored  to  commend  the  truth  to 
every  man's  conscience  in  the  sight  of  God. 
He   acted  upon   the   assumption   that  the 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       149 

Gospel  had  an  ally  in  every  man's  moral 
nature ;  or,  as  we  should  say,  that  every  man 
is  Christocentric  in  his  essential  constitution. 
The  soul  is  naturally  the  captive  of  Jesus 
Christ;  in  him,  and  in  him  alone,  its  needs 
are  met.  This  conviction  pervades  the 
ancient  Christian  literature.  It  is  recoof- 
nized,  and  made  basic,  in  the  Alexandrian 
doctrine  of  the  Logos  as  the  immanent 
reason  in  the  cosmos.  The  fiery  Tertullian 
gives  expression  to  it  when  he  describes 
the  soul  as  naturally  Christian.  Augustine 
affirms  it  when  in  his  Confessions  he  ex- 
claims :  *  *  Thou  hast  made  us  for  thyself, 
and  our  heart  is  restless  till  it  rests  in 
thee."  There  is  no  flattery  of  human 
nature  in  this.  The  African  theologians 
taught  the  moral  corruption  of  the  natural 
man  in  phrases  too  rude  and  sweeping  for 
our  modern  acceptance.  They  did  not  dis- 
count the  bitter  enmity  of  the  unregenerate 
heart.  The  will  was  described  as  com- 
pletely enslaved.  The  depravity  was  total. 
None  the  less  did  they  insist  that  what  was 
natural  to  man  was  also  unnatural  to  him, 


150  The  World  for  Christ. 

and  that  he  was  conscious  of  this  eternal 
schism  in  himself.  In  the  Pauline  phrase, 
the  law  of  God  is  written  upon  every  man's 
heart,  and  from  its  recognized  authority 
there  is  no  release.  It  pursues  the  most 
flagrant  and  persistent  transgressor.  His 
thoughts  perpetually  accuse  and  condemn 
him.  He  is  self-judged,  and  from  that  self- 
judgment  he  cannot  escape. 

Therein  lies  the  guilt  of  man ;  he  is  con- 
sciously without  excuse.  And  therein  also 
lies  the  hope  of  man's  recovery ;  he  can  be 
saved,  for  whether  condemned  or  saved,  the 
divine  movement  must  secure  self-move- 
ment. Conviction  must  be  self-conviction ; 
repentance  must  be  voluntary  and  spontane- 
ous ;  captivity  to  Jesus  Christ  must  be  the 
captivity  of  free  self -surrender.  Deliberate- 
ly did  Paul  refrain  from  the  arts  of  enticing 
speech.  He  did  not  seek  to  please,  but  to 
convince.  He  did  not  appeal  to  the  ear,  but 
to  the  conscience,  to  the  moral  reason  in 
every  hearer,  which  cannot  be  bribed.  He 
knew,  in  bitter  and  prolonged  personal  expe- 
rience, how  unavailing  was  such  an  attempt. 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       151 

His  rage  had  only  driven  the  iron  deeper 
into  his  soul.  Peace  had  come  to  him  only 
by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ;  and  he  had  the 
rational  audacity  to  assume  that  all  souls 
were  alike;  that  the  conscience  in  every 
man  was  responsive  to  Law  and  Gospel,  as 
the  vibrating  needle  is  to  the  pole.  Every 
preacher  of  the  Gospel,  at  home  or  abroad, 
must  assume  that ;  taking  it  for  granted  that 
in  every  human  heart  abides  the  witness  of 
God,  that  every  soul  is  made  for  Christ,  and 
Christ  for  every  soul. 

But  the  apostle  does  not  stop  with  this 
responsiveness  of  the  moral  nature  to  the 
Gospel.  He  speaks  of  his  preaching  and 
its  results  as  a  demonstration  or  proof  of  the 
Spirit  and  power  of  God,  of  the  moral  omnip- 
otence of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  moral 
nature  is  not  regarded  as  autonomous  and 
self-centered,  but  as  moved  upon  by  the  di- 
vine Spirit.  The  Gospel  had  an  ally  in 
every  human  heart,  but  it  had  also  an  ally 
in  the  Holy  Ghost,  whom  the  creeds  honor 
as  the  **Lord  and  Giver  of  Life."  The 
Gospel  carries  a  message  which  is  as  true  for 


152  The  World  for  Christ. 

heaven  as  it  is  for  earth,  for  God  as  it  is  for 
man.  In  it  the  righteousness  of  God  is  ex- 
hibited, as  well  as  man's  salvation  pro- 
claimed ;  in  fact,  man's  salvation  is  secured 
only  by  the  exhibition  and  communication 
of  the  righteousness  of  God.  The  Gospel 
is  congruous  to  man's  nature,  and  it  is  con- 
gruous to  God's  nature.  For  neither  is  it  a 
makeshift,  an  arbitrary  and  artifical  scheme. 
It  proclaims  the  eternal  verities.  It  in- 
carnates the  wisdom  of  God ;  and  because  it 
does  this,  it  is  the  power  of  God.  I  have 
heard  Methodist  ministers  speak  of  ''  Holy 
Ghost  preaching."  I  do  not  take  very  kind- 
ly to  the  phrase,  but  the  truth  in  it  should 
master  us  all.  The  biblical  doctrine  of  the 
Spirit  is  the  most  delicate  and  difficult  of 
all,  and  a  crude  formulation  of  it  has  led  into 
many  vagaries  and  excesses.  The  Holy 
Spirit  is  the  Spirit  of  truth,  of  holiness,  of 
reverence,  of  sobriety  and  soundness  of 
mind,  of  self-control,  of  patience,  of  for- 
bearance and  good  will,  of  humility  and 
charity.  It  is  easy  to  run  into  extrava- 
gance on  such  themes  as  the  baptism  of  the 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       153 

Spirit,  the  enduement  with  power  by  the 
Spirit,  the  anointing  with  the  Holy  Ghost, 
as  a  specific  gift  to  be  sought  and  secured. 
But  we  cannot  emphasize  too  much  the  ne- 
cessity of  honoring  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
world's  regeneration,  and  cultivating  a  live- 
ly confidence  in  his  universal  and  almighty 
alliance  with  us  in  securing  the  triumph  of 
the  Gospel. 

If  we  inquire  how  the  apostle  secured  for 
his  preaching  the  exhibition  of  the  power  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  we  shall  find  it  in  his  state- 
ment, immediately  preceding,  that  when  he 
came  to  Corinth  he  had  determined  to  know 
nothing  save  Jesus  Christ  and  him  crucified. 
It  has  been  suggested  that  his  failure  with 
the  philosophers  at  Athens  had  opened  his 
eyes  to  the  futility  of  adopting  any  other 
plan.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  such  an 
inference  can  be  made  good,  as  it  is  evident 
that  his  discourse  was  interrupted  just  as  he 
had  touched  upon  his  theme.  We  have  only 
the  introduction,  the  sermon  was  prema- 
turely cut  short.  But  it  is  plain  that,  under 
the  guidance  of   the  Holy  Spirit,  the   one 


154  The  World  for  Christ. 

thing  to  which  Paul  addressed  himself  was 
the  preaching  of  Christ  and  him  crucified. 
He  had  done  this  in  Galatia,  before  he  came 
to  Corinth ;  he  had  done  this  in  Damascus, 
before  he  went  into  Galatia ;  and  he  con- 
tinued to  do  this  to  the  last.  The  Holy- 
Spirit  is  honored  when  Christ  is  preached ; 
he  is  dishonored  when  anything  else  is 
preached.  Jesus  declared  that  the  office  of 
the  Spirit  was  to  bring  to  remembrance  and 
make  plain  the  things  concerning  himself, 
to  reveal  the  place  occupied  by  him  in  the 
eternal  purpose  of  redemption.  And  when 
he  defines  the  Spirit's  vocation  as  convicting 
men  of  sin,  righteousness,  and  judgment, 
he  associates  these  several  ministries  with 
his  own  person — "  of  sin,  because  they  be- 
lieve not  on  me  ;  of  righteousness,  because 
I  go  to  my  Father,  and  ye  see  me  no  more ; 
of  judgment,  because  the  prince  of  this 
world  is  judged." 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  the 
illuminating,  the  quickening,  the  inspir- 
ing, the  comforting  influences  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.     All  this  is  based  upon  the  frequent 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       155 

comparison,  in  Scripture,  of  his  agency  to 
that  of  light  and  fire.  But  light  is  not  the 
immediate  object  of  sight ;  it  is  the  medium 
in  vision.  And  here  I  can  do  no  better 
than  to  quote  the  felicitous  words  of  the 
late  Archibald  Alexander  Hodge,  from  the 
sixth  of  his  Popular  Lectures  on  Theological 
Themes :  '  *  The  rays  of  light  radiated  or  re- 
flected from  any  surface  to  another  never 
reveal  themselves ;  they  only  make  manifest 
or  reproduce  by  reflection  the  surface  from 
which  they  come.  Thus  everyone  sees  by 
means  of  the  rays  radiated  or  reflected  the 
very  image  of  the  sun  and  moon  in  the  water 
and  all  the  features  of  the  landscape  in  the 
mirror.  So  it  is  always  in  the  work  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  He  never  speaks  of  himself, 
but  he  always  receives  of  Christ  and  commu- 
nicates to  us  the  Christ  and  his  redemptive 
grace.  The  rays  of  light  never  picture  them- 
selves, but  the  stars  from  which  they  come. 
So  the  Holy  Ghost  never  excites  in  our  con- 
sciousness thoughts  and  emotions  relating  to 
himself,  but  always  those  which  relate  to  the 
Godhead  and  to  the  incarnate  Christ.    There- 


156  The  World  for  Christ. 

fore  it  is,  that  although  the  Holy  Ghost  in- 
spired the  Scriptures,  and  although  he  is 
the  immediately  present  and  constantly 
active  person  of  the  Godhead  in  our  hearts 
and  lives,  yet  there  is  comparatively  so  little 
conspicuity  given  in  Scripture  and  in  Chris- 
tian thought  to  the  personality  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  He  is  ever  speaking,  yet  not  of 
himself,  but  of  Christ." 

That  is  well  said.  I  do  not  see  how  it  could 
be  better  said.  Holy  Ghost  living  is  Christ 
living  in  us.  Holy  Ghost  preaching  is  the 
preaching  of  Christ.  To  be  filled  with  the 
Spirit  is  to  be  full  of  Christ.  To  be  endued 
with  the  Spirit  is  to  be  clothed  with  Christ. 
To  be  guided  by  the  Spirit  is  to  be  guided 
by  Christ.  Looking  steadfastly  at  the  face 
of  Christ,  we  are  changed  from  glory  to  glory 
by  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord.  His  beauty  upon 
us  and  in  us  ripens  into  the  graces  of  the 
Spirit.  We  must  cleave  to  Christ  because 
the  Spirit  cleaves  to  him,  dwells  in  him  in 
infinite  measure,  and  incessantly  proceeds 
from  him.  And  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel,    which   is   to   be   honored   by   the 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       157 

demonstration  or  evidence  of  the  Spirit's 
presence  and  power,  must  be  the  preaching 
of  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  dying  for  the 
sins  of  men,  and  rising  again  for  their 
justification.  That  is  the  Gospel,  and 
where  that  is  left  out  the  Spirit  is  hindered 
and  dishonored.  There  may  be  much  that 
is  true  and  beautiful,  there  may  be  a 
good  deal  of  sound  theology,  there  may  be 
a  very  beautiful  and  attractive  body  of  pre- 
cepts, but  the  fair  body  has  no  soul  when 
Jesus  Christ  is  not  the  beating  heart. 
There  is  no  power  of  God  unto  salvation, 
except  in  that  Gospel  whose  sole  and  supreme 
message  is  the  divine  Christ  as  the  almighty 
Saviour  of  sinners.  That  message  the  Holy 
Ghost  always  honors,  even  when  men  re- 
ject it ;  and  he  honors  no  other  message, 
though  the  world  applaud. 

It  is  the  living  Christ,  risen  and  regnant, 
whom  we  are  to  preach,  as  did  Paul.  But 
our  knowledge  of  the  living  Christ  is  me- 
diated by  our  knowledge  of  the  historic 
Christ.     The  Christ  in  history  is  the  Christ 

of  history.     Without  the    New   Testament 
11 


158  The  World  for  Christ. 

our  knowledge  of  Christ  would  vanish.  He 
would  remain,  but  his  image  upon  our 
minds  and  hearts  would  disappear.  Hence 
the  same  apostle  who  preached  only  Christ, 
exhorted  Timothy  to  preach  the  word  and 
to  continue  his  diligent  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. We  can  carry  the  Gospel  of  Christ 
into  any  land,  and  into  all  lands,  only 
as  we  carry  the  Bible,  the  whole  Bible  in 
both  Testaments ;  for  the  *  *  testimony  of 
Jesus  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy."  There- 
fore it  is  that  as  soon  as  our  missionaries 
master  the  speech  of  any  tribe  or  people, 
they  immediately  begin  the  translation  of 
the  Bible.  Christ  cannot  be  preached  in 
any  other  way.  The  great  salvation  cannot 
secure  firm  historical  lodgment  apart  from 
the  record  which  contains  its  history.  And 
as  soon  as  that  is  done,  a  thousand  and  one 
questions  arise  which  must  be  clearly  and 
satisfactorily  answered.  A  Christian  litera- 
ture is  a  necessity. 

Some,  indeed,  speak  in  disparagement 
of  a  book  religion,  and  sound  the  warning 
cry  against  Bibliolatry.     There  never  has 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       159 

been  much  danger  of  that.  It  is,  of  course, 
quite  possible  to  make  claims  for  the  Bible 
which  the  Bible  itself  does  not  make, 
and  which  a  sober  criticism  will  hesitate 
to  accept.  The  Bible  may  be  authorita- 
tive as  a  guide  in  the  revelation  of  re- 
demption, without  being  a  court  of  final 
appeal  in  cosmology  or  chronology.  It 
may  be  reliable  in  its  biography  and  history, 
without  being  absolutely  inerrant  in  specific 
detail.  Certain  it  is  that  events  in  the  life 
of  our  Lord  are  not  marshaled  in  exact 
chronological  order  in  the  gospels,  nor  have 
we  much  more  than  a  charcoal  sketch.  But 
the  main  lineaments  of  the  wonderful  story 
are  easily  traced,  are  thoroughly  consistent, 
and  in  their  simplicity  carry  conviction  of 
their  credibility.  The  Synoptic  and  the 
Johannean  problems  have  ceased  to  alarm 
us,  and  the  dissection  to  which  the  older 
books  have  been,  and  are,  subjected  cannot 
set  aside  or  invalidate  the  phenomenal  rank 
of  the  Old  Testament  literature,  and  the 
part  which  it  played  in  re-Christian  history. 
I  sometimes  think  that  we  could  get  along 


160  The  World  for  Christ. 

without  a  theory  of  inspiration ;  but  there 
seems  to  me,  at  present,  to  be  more  danger 
of  an  undervaluation  of  the  Bible,  than  of 
an  overestimate.  There  is  no  special  call 
for  excusing  or  recommending  its  neglect. 
An  historical  religion  must  have  an  historical 
record  as  its  complement  and  guarantee. 
Religion  must  be  made  wholly  independent 
of  historical  facts,  if  it  can  maintain  its  place 
without  a  book.  But  Christ  is  Christianity. 
The  incarnation,  the  atonement,  and  the 
resurrection  belong  to  the  historic  domain ; 
and  for  such  facts  we  must  have  contem- 
poraneous and  trustworthy  evidence,  or  sur- 
render the  Gospel  which  is  based  upon  them. 
The  only  way  in  which  such  evidence  can 
be  preserved  is  in  written  records. 

It  is  the  greatness  and  power  of  Chris- 
tianity that  it  has  such  records,  which 
from  Celsus  down  to  Renan  have  main- 
tained their  unimpeachable  historical  trust- 
worthiness. And  we  should  regard  it  as 
an  immense  advantage,  in  our  conflict  with 
paganism,  that  we  can  make  it  plain  that 
we  have  not  believed,  and  that  we  do  not 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       161 

proclaim,  cunningly  devised  fables — that 
the  Christ  whom  we  preach  got  himself  em- 
bodied in  a  book,  written  by  men  who  had 
known  him  and  had  conversed  with  him, 
who  were  eyewitnesses  of  his  glory  on  the 
mount,  and  after  his  resurrection.  The 
triumph  of  Christianity  must  continue  to 
be,  what  it  always  has  been,  the  triumph 
of  a  book  of  which  Christ  is  the  heart ;  for 
even  the  Roman  Church,  with  all  its  venera- 
tion for  tradition,  guards  with  jealousy  the 
deposit  of  sacred  Scripture,  and  no  Protes- 
tant theologian  has  given  to  the  holy  word 
a  higher  place  than  has  the  present  vener- 
able pontiff  and  bishop  of  Rome. 

The  use  of  the  Bible  in  securing  the 
triumph  of  the  Gospel  compels  us  to  recog- 
nize another  indispensable  agency,  the 
establishment  and  equipment  of  schools  of 
sacred  learning.  The  Church  may  not 
arrogate  to  herself  the  supervision  and  con- 
trol of  the  entire  educational  discipline.  It 
is  not  her  business  to  make  scholars,  but 
Christian  disciples.  In  making  disciples, 
however,  she  comes  with  historical  records 


162  The  World  for  Christ. 

in  her  hands,  and  that  lays  the  necessity  of 
scholarship  upon  her.  There  is  a  province 
of  truth  in  which  her  explorations  must  be 
thorough  and  unwearied.  There  are  tasks 
for  linguists,  and  archaeologists,  and  ex- 
plorers, and  critics,  and  historians,  and  the- 
ologians. Antioch  and  Alexandria  were 
the  pioneers  in  a  succession  of  great  schools 
which  must  continue  to  the  end  of  time, 
and  which  must  strike  their  roots  deep  into 
every  nation  which  is  to  be  evangelized. 
Robert  College  at  Constantinople,  the  col- 
leges at  Aintab,  Marash,  and  Beyroot,  the 
Doshisha  in  Japan,  with  scores  and  hun- 
dreds of  secondary  schools  of  Christian 
training,  have  been  among  the  mightiest 
evangelizing  agencies  of  the  Orient.  If  I 
mention  only  these,  it  is  because  the  list  is 
too  long  for  complete  enumeration.  To 
sketch  them  all  would  be  to  write  the  his- 
tory of  modern  missions.  Every  denomina- 
tion has  been  compelled  to  lay  the  founda- 
tion of  institutions  of  Christian  learning; 
in  Asia,  at  the  western  frontier,  among  the 
Negroes   of    the   South.     The    theological 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       163 

seminary,  however  meager  its  curriculum, 
crowds  hard  upon  the  Christian  evangelist; 
and,  in  process  of  time,  it  must  be  fully 
equipped  to  meet  the  demands  which  are 
sure  to  be  made  upon  it.  Our  own  young 
men  are  not  un frequently  discouraged  to 
visit  the  lecture  rooms  of  European  univer- 
sities; and  I  am  afraid  that,  by  some,  a 
knowledge  of  German  and  French  is  re- 
garded as  a  dangerous  thing.  The  remedy 
is  to  have  better  schools  here,  where  noth- 
ing shall  be  evaded  or  ignored,  so  that  the 
closest  contact  with  the  keenest  European 
thought  will  not  result  in  mental  perplexity 
and  unrest.  The  cure  for  imperfect  knowl- 
edge is  more  knowledge  at  home;  not  a 
prohibitory  tariff  upon  imported  thought, 
nor  a  narrow  denunciation  of  foreign  schools 
as  breeding  places  of  heresy.  And  what 
we  need  in  Christian  America  is  needed  in 
every  land  to  which  we  carry  the  Gospel. 

Note  now  how  these  agencies,  which  we 
have  passed  in  rapid  review,  constitute  an 
organic  unity,  so  that  you  cannot  use  one 
without  using  all  the  rest,     The  individual 


164  The  World  for  Christ. 

conscience  responds  only  to  the  vital  impact 
of  the  Holy  Ghost;  the  Holy  Ghost  dis- 
plays his  presence  and  power  only  as  Christ 
is  preached;  Christ  cannot  be  presented 
apart  from  the  Holy  Scriptures;  and  the 
Bible  compels  a  constant  vindication  of  its 
authority,  and  a  careful  interpretation  of  its 
contents,  which  makes  Christian  scholarship 
a  necessity  to  every  church.  Nor  can  we 
afford  to  lose  sig"ht  of  the  fact  that  the 
entire  enginery  of  evangelization  must  be- 
come indigenous  to  every  race.  The  seed 
which  we  plant  must  grow  in  its  own  soil, 
and  make  provision  for  its  own  increase. 
There  is  no  natural  evolution  from  barba- 
rism into  civilization.  But  unless  the  seeds 
of  a  higher  civilization  become  naturalized 
in  a  barbaric  race,  its  redemption  cannot  be 
secured.  Each  nation  must  work  out  its 
own  salvation ;  and  in  working  out  its  own 
salvation  it  is  likely  to  fall  a  prey  to  all  the 
infantile  diseases  which  are  inseparable 
from  ultimate  maturity.  The  time  must 
come,  in  every  foreign  missionary  field, 
when  supervision  must  cease.     It  may  be 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       165 

prematurely  withdrawn,  and  that  is  cruelty ; 
it  may  be  needlessly  prolonged,  and  that  is 
tyranny,  which  is  sure  to  produce  resistance 
and  schism.  Because  we  have  given  our 
money,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  gives  us  the 
right  to  a  perpetual  guardianship.  If  we 
did  not  give  our  money  to  Christ,  and  for 
his  sake,  it  were  better  that  we  had  kept  it  in 
our  pockets.  If  we  gave  it  to  Christ,  and 
for  his  sake,  then  we  should  be  more  than 
willing  to  retire  from  our  sponsorship. 

That  problem  is  beginning  to  confront  us. 
Native  preachers  and  native  churches  are 
demanding  larger  freedom  and  less  inter- 
ference. The  demands  may  be  extrava- 
gant ;  but  they  are  the  signs  that  the  period 
of  Christian  infancy  is  past.  And  to  native 
preachers  and  native  churches,  in  the  end, 
must  be  surrendered  the  task  and  the  re- 
sponsibility of  national  Christianization. 
That  carries  its  dangers  with  it,  but  the 
dangers  can  be  reduced  to  a  minimum  by 
generous  consideration  and  sympathy  on 
our  part.  We  can  cultivate  fraternity 
when  we  have  surrendered  lordship.     We 


166  The  World  for  Christ. 

can  counsel  as  elder  brothers  when  we  cease 
to  command.  Nor  should  we  forget  that 
our  own  Christianity  has  been  compelled  to 
run  the  gauntlet  of  its  foes  without  external 
authoritative  supervision.  The  Gospel  has 
survived  and  widened  its  conquests  among 
ourselves ;  why  should  we  not  trust  its  in- 
herent and  subduing  energy  wherever  it 
has  gained  an  intelligent  foothold  ?  If, 
during  the  most  exacting  period  of  its  his- 
tory, when  its  adherents  were  in  hourly 
danger  of  their  lives,  Christianity  shook 
itself  free  from  the  coils  of  Gnostic  and 
Neo-Platonic  speculation,  which  threatened 
to  strangle  it  in  the  lands  of  its  birth,  there 
is  no  good  ground  for  the  fear  that  Bud- 
dhism and  Confucianism  can  check  or  reverse 
the  advance  of  the  Gospel.  Under  any  cir- 
cumstances, the  final  debate  between  them 
must  be  conducted  by  champions  to  whom 
these  oriental  systems  are  a  vernacular  in- 
heritance. European  and  American  lec- 
turers can  no  more  settle  the  intellectual  dis- 
putes of  India,  China,  and  Japan,  than 
their  most  gifted  men  can  assume  leader- 


The  Agencies  to  be  Employed.       167 

ship  among  us.  We  can  give  them  the 
Gospel  of  Christ,  and  place  our  Bible  in 
their  hands;  and  then  we  must  leave  the 
leaven  to  do  its  transforming  work  in  its 
own  way.  There  is  no  instance  on  record 
where  polytheism  has  ever  succeeded  in 
supplanting  or  crippling  monotheism.  The 
struggle  may  have  been  fierce  and  long,  but 
the  idols  have  had  to  go.  There  is  no  in- 
stance on  record  where  paganism,  in  its  most 
cultured  forms,  has  been  able  to  regain 
ascendancy,  when  once  a  native  Christian 
church  has  challenged  it.  And  in  these 
days,  when  oceans  have  dwindled  to  mill 
ponds,  when  the  electric  spark  has  anni- 
hilated distance,  when  thought  secures  a 
universal  audience,  there  is  a  Christian  sol- 
idarity whose  steady  pressure  will  prevent 
any  evangelized  community  from  relapsing 
into  the  heathenism,  out  of  which  it  has 
been  lifted  by  the  preaching  of  the  cross. 

It  only  remains  for  me  to  thank  you,  one 
and  all,  for  the  courtesies  which  I  have  re- 
ceived at  your  hands,  and  for  the  patient  at- 
tention with  which  you  have  listened  to  me. 


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